


Tempered

by Comatosejoy



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Sexual Assault Mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:47:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27770983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comatosejoy/pseuds/Comatosejoy
Summary: Laurent is a diamond thief for a crime syndicate in former-Vere who, while on a job, gets the idea to rob the Crown Prince of Akeilos at his lavish engagement party. Things go from bad to worse when it turns out that Laurent's uncle, the unofficial leader of the syndicate, has conspired with Kastor to off both the prince and Laurent in one disastrous night. Suddenly, Damen is forced to trust Laurent, a man who was trying to rob him, and Laurent must trust Damen, a man whose country's occupation helped destabilize Vere.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 65
Kudos: 84





	1. Prologue

** i. **

Patras Jewelry Co. was only a ten-minute walk from Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. The flat that Laurent had temporarily rented in the Latin Quarter wasn’t far either, though it was under-furnished and had two roommates too many.

He could imagine a life like this--a nice job in a cool city in a part of town where his beauty didn’t particularly stand out. Get a boyfriend, get a little dog, bring home macarons from that overpriced, touristy place on Rue di Rivoli, read novels on his days off in front of some cafe or another, fade into the dreamy limestone and forget about the strange and extraordinary and painful life he’d had before. 

That’s who he channeled at Patras. The owner, one Mr. Torveld, was a baron or a viscount or was brothers with one, and a cursory Google had shown--via tabloids at least a decade old--that he liked naive blonde twinks. And Laurent could be naive for the paycheck. 

In the afternoon, after some British reality star had come through the shop and bought a tacky pair of earrings that screamed new money, Mr. Torveld switched on an entertainment news channel--“It’s our job to know who might be in Paris shopping for an engagement ring,” he had said when he sensed Laurent’s disinterest. It was clearly an excuse. 

The presenter--Laurent would not deign to call her a journalist--was pretty and smartly dressed, out of breath in front of the famous Ios palace. 

“Today, Crown Prince Damianos of Akielos announced his engagement to Lady Jokaste,” she said. The feed cut to a stock image of the prince in a billowy white linen shirt on the beach, holding hands with a decidedly beautiful blonde, then to another of him alone on a red carpet. “This on the heels of King Theomedes’s advisors announcing that he recently suffered a mild heart attack.” 

Laurent thought perhaps Mr. Torveld could hear him roll his eyes because his boss turned to look at him. He did his best to look starry-eyed rather than bored and said, “That’s very romantic. Isn’t the prince handsome?” 

In truth, he was preparing for the nonstop updates on every inane detail of the proposal followed by hours of speculation. It had been a slow news year for the wealthy part of Europe.

“He came through here once and got a very tasteful little tennis bracelet for his consort. He was terribly polite. Not my type, though,” Mr. Torveld answered. But Laurent knew that. Mr. Torveld liked them sweet and soft, with pale hair and paler skin. Maybe Laurent would be exactly Mr. Torveld’s type in another life. 

The television program was now showing a studio where a woman said, “We are getting an update that the prince proposed with his late mother’s ring, the extremely famous 14-carat, emerald-cut diamond set in white gold.”

This piqued Laurent’s interest. Lowball, that’s worth €500,000. Considerably more for the right collector. There was probably some American weirdo who’d pay four times as much for it just so he could show it off to his weirdo friends at his dinner parties. Or it could be collateral in other deals--that’s what they used the Van Gogh they’d stolen last year for. It’d be a trick to get it off this Jokaste’s finger, though. 

“I don’t think I’d like to be proposed to this close to Christmas,” Laurent said pensively. His tone implied that such an issue meant a great deal to him. “It seems like there’d be a lot else going on. Hello? I just got engaged, and you want me to worry about baby Jesus?” 

Mr. Torveld was indulgent with a good sense of humor. “I know you’re Veretian and they weren’t so pious over there, but this is a Catholic country, and you can get in serious trouble for that sort of blasphemy.” 

The subject of Vere was a tender one for Laurent. Anyone else might not notice the small furrow in his brow, but Mr. Torveld, damn him, noticed small shifts in Laurent’s posture, little inflections in his voice, and minute twitches in his otherwise schooled face. 

“Oh, my. I’m sorry, Laurent, it was only a joke--” 

“It’s quite alright, Mr. Torveld,” Laurent said as sunnily as he could manage.

“When I think of what you must have seen--” he tried again. This was a common mistake people made, trying to empathize when they could not. Mr. Torveld had never himself seen war, or anything close to it, but he was smart; _woke_ as they say. He read topical nonfiction--anti-capitalist stuff like Murray Bookchin to understand the situation in Rojava (the irony that he sold diamonds for €250,000 a pop was apparently lost on him) and stuff like Ta-Nehisi Coates to understand the racial politics of the United States. He’d seen a few films about what happened in Vere, read a little of this or that. Followed some conflict journalists on Twitter who’d been there when things were really bad. 

Laurent detested the pitying quality of Mr. Torveld’s voice. He detested the unspoken sadness in strangers’ eyes when he said, “I’m Veretian,” and then corrected, “I grew up in Arles, which is in Belloy.” 

There is no graceful way to end a conversation about it. _When I think of what you must have seen_! And yet, what had he seen? Everything had happened incrementally. It was normal, normal, normal, until it was not normal. When had it crossed over into not normal? The analytical part of his brain said things were divided into two times: before Auguste’s death and after. But things aren’t fucking dichotomous, no matter how much he’d like them to be. Things did not fit neatly into one box or another. Vere had dissolved before Auguste died, after all. 

Laurent did his best to sound like someone who did not let adversity harden him when he said, “I have only seen beauty since I came to Paris.” 

This was, of course, a load of horseshit. There were homeless people camped out alongside the IKEA mere blocks away. On his way home from work the previous day, he’d seen two rats fight to the death at Pont Neuf--a scene which he found strangely compelling and stayed to watch until the end. And he’d had the unfortunate task of waiting as Orlant and Jord, on his uncle’s orders, questioned (and subsequently killed) a guy living near Sacré-Cœur who’d been skimming on jobs, despite the fact that Laurent had made it explicit that his teams did heists and heists only. 

It was nearly freezing that night. Mr. Torveld had feigned having a dinner cancelation quite theatrically and had asked Laurent to accompany him to a famous restaurant known for both its souffle and its friendliness to foreigners. 

“I have a date, Mr. Torveld,” Laurent said, waiting for his boss’s face to fall before he added, “a date with _The Idiot_. I promised myself I’d read it this year and I’ve only got two weeks left to make good on that promise.” 

“Which translation?” Mr. Torveld asked, his driver parked outside, as he helped Laurent with his coat. “You’re quite the polyglot if I’m not mistaken.” 

“I can read Russian--not well, though. I have the English translation, too, as a sort of lingua franca.” 

“How ambitious! When I was your age, I was doing coke in Ibiza. I didn’t even get my bachelor’s until I was twenty-six.” 

It was statements like that, which so flippantly showed Mr. Torveld’s considerable wealth and privilege, that would cause Laurent to snap back to reality. There would be no boyfriend, no little dog, no expensive macarons, no novels to read at his leisure as he sipped espresso. There would be no quiet, good life. And Mr. Torveld with his kind smile, with everything he could possibly want, no adversity or care in the world, was about to be robbed blind and he fucking deserved it. 

“Cocaine in Ibiza!” Laurent said, incensed, as he walked home in the frigid air. He hated rich people, dripping with tacky jewels, announcing their engagements on the news, putting off their education for a couple of years so they could shovel drugs up their noses and fuck blond boys in Spain. They were hedonists. 

Orlant was in the apartment, cooking something that didn’t look particularly appetizing and scrolling through his phone. He ignored Laurent pointedly and, when Laurent saw the newspaper on the table, he found out why. 

“That job we did in Nice made the papers?” 

It had been pretty small-scale, and they’d only taken a few thousand euros worth of jewelry. It had been a crime of opportunity, really, as Jord had pointed out that the security cameras in that area had quite a few blind spots.

“Because of the fucking wig you had me wear.” 

Laurent laughed. The fucking wig! He’d insisted that Orlant wear it, saying that he was the most recognizable of the three of them (this was patently false, but Laurent had said it with such conviction that no one argued), and that he must wear a hairpiece. The wig was a woman’s, styled with a bouffant that made Orlant look completely absurd, which Laurent enjoyed quietly. It had apparently not occurred to Orlant until today that the wig had been a lark. 

“It was a very funny wig,” Laurent answered. 

“I’m getting roasted alive in the group chat.” 

“There’s a group chat?” 

“You know that American movie where John Travolta plays a fat woman? That’s who everyone is saying I am.” Orlant turned the phone to show an image of John Travolta in a mumu and prosthetics. Laurent considered the image carefully. 

Pensively, he asked, “What is this film?” 

“Laurent!”

“The bright side here is that the wig has taken center-stage. Is there a description of us? No. Does the article even say what we stole? All anyone can focus on is the wig.” 

Orlant couldn’t argue with that. Laurent turned the newspaper to the front page, where “PRINCE DAMIANOS TO WED SOMETIME NEXT YEAR,” read in bold letters. 

“What do you know about Akielos?” Laurent asked casually. 

Orlant made an incredulous noise. Akielos had very famously attempted to interfere with the Veretian civil war which had made the situation about a thousand times worse. Prince Damianos had certainly gotten a few nice photo ops with grimy, orphaned Veretian children, standing in the rubble of destroyed Arles in tactical gear that looked like it was made to appeal to his vanity rather than serve any practical purpose.

Laurent pulled up Lady Jokaste’s Wikipedia page on his phone. “Looks like the woman he’s going to marry majored in art history. How much you wanna bet she’s got the palace decked out in priceless paintings? Engagement parties can be chaotic affairs, you know. I wouldn’t be surprised if three or four of those paintings went missing!” 

“You and your fucking paintings. Did you see the rock he gave her?” 

“We’d have to cut her finger off to get it,” Laurent said. “But who knows what we could find in that palace. Fabergé eggs, maybe? You know, Vannes was telling me the other day that she was working a job that went south. She heard the cops coming, they hadn’t gotten a single jewel out of the cases. She says, ‘Fuck it,’ and gets her guys to just take the table in the sitting room. It was a genuine Queen Anne. Worth €10,000 easy.” 

“Okay, say you get support from the Council. What’s your plan for getting into the building?” 

Laurent cracked open his book. He hadn’t been lying about wanting to finish _The Idiot_. “I’m working on that.”

** ii. **

“Can’t I persuade you to come with me to this party? Famous people, good music, good food…” Mr. Torveld appealed for the third time that day.

“Mr. Torveld, I’m surprised at you. What would your customers think if we closed two hours early?” 

“That we were behaving very Parsian. No one is going to come in here and buy a diamond ring on New Year’s Eve, darling.” 

Laurent bristled a little, not a fan of endearments, and certainly not a fan of endearments coming from someone who was supposed to be his boss. 

“Why don’t you go along, and I’ll meet up with you after I close up?” 

“Really?”

“Of course,” Laurent lied. “Just text me the address. Would I give your name at the door for the guestlist?” 

“Yes! I’m so pleased. You’ll have a wonderful time. Are you sure you don’t want to close up right now and go get ready?” 

Laurent did his level best to look hurt. “Am I not presentable as I am?” 

Mr. Torveld, backtracking, sputtered out, “No, you’re perfect. You’re lovely. I’ll see you soon.” 

_He’s gone,_ Laurent texted Jord.

** iii. **

Jord could not help but be _sort of_ excited for this plan. It involved groping Laurent, after all, and although Laurent had to look upset for the security cameras at Patras Jewelry Co., who was to say that Laurent wouldn’t think, in the back of his mind, Huh, maybe Jord knows what he’s doing with his hands.

He wouldn’t say no, hypothetically, if Laurent became interested in him because of the encounter and, after they absconded to Belloy, wanted to fuck on top of a pile of money. 

So, bedraggled and behaving drunkenly, he stumbled into the jewelry store ten minutes before Laurent was set to close up. 

The security tapes had no audio, and so, though Laurent _looked_ alarmed for the sake of the camera, he said, “Cutting it a little close, are we?” 

Jord, really getting into character, made a lunge mouth-first at Laurent, which Laurent cowered away from. He swung his hand out to grab Laurent’s crotch and was pushed away. Laurent’s face was red. _Good acting,_ thought Jord as he stumbled back a bit and flipped him off belligerently. 

“I think that’s good enough,” Laurent said, his voice breaking slightly. He’d managed to start crying, the sight of which was so bizarre that it almost gave Jord pause. 

“Alright, see you tonight,” Jord said, still walking clumsily out the door and down the street until he was out of view of even the CCTV cameras in the neighborhood.

** iv. **

Laurent trembled as he locked the door behind Jord and collapsed against the wall. His face in his hands, he sobbed. For the sake of verisimilitude, he really had been working himself up, picking at old, scabbed-over wounds: the day he became an orphan, the last day he spent with Auguste before he was killed, the day his uncle, his next-of-kin, came to collect him--”Poor Laurent. I’m the only family you have left,” his uncle had cooed, tongue on his ear, and Laurent had imagined himself high above Arles, a particle of ash swirling around the troposphere, an impartial result of the destruction rather than a victim of it.

Laurent collected himself, though not particularly well--this was key--and completed locking up the store.

At the stroke of midnight, the boom and crackle of fireworks could be heard across Paris. The New Year was always celebrated this way, and no layperson could distinguish that noise from, say, the explosion of a stick of dynamite planted in the vestibule of a famous (and improperly locked-up) jewelry store.

** v. **

Mr. Torveld’s mouth was dry and his head ached. It was too early to be up, certainly too early on a holiday where he’d been drinking more ardently than Dionysus mere hours ago, and certainly too early to be speaking to fucking INTERPOL outside of his destroyed storefront.

God, it was fucking bright. Was it always this bright? “Sir, we’ve determined that your vestibule’s front entrance was left unlocked. That’s how the criminals got past your first set of alarms. We have reason to believe that this is connected to a criminal organization we’ve been after for some time now. Did you lock up last night?” said a dark-skinned agent in front of him. 

“No, no. I left early. My employee locked up. I’ve already called him to come in,” Mr. Torveld said, massaging his temples, making plans to file his insurance claim already. 

“My God,” he heard Laurent gasp next to him. He had not sensed him approach. Immediately, Mr. Torveld regretted calling him in. In his own panic, he had not considered what unpleasant memories seeing a bombed building might bring back to him. Mr. Torveld wondered about his childhood--Laurent had mentioned in passing that he had no immediate family as a result of the turmoil that had been Vere’s dissolution--and had fantasized about the task of saving him. Poor, sweet Laurent, now speaking to that same dark-skinned agent, was shaking like a leaf. 

The agent nodded, gingerly stepping over rubble and into the store where another agent was reviewing security footage. 

“It’s all my fault, Mr. Torveld,” Laurent said, clearly racked with guilt, his hands clasped together in contrition. With his long, golden hair and his angelic features, he reminded Mr. Torveld a bit of a classical painting of a repentant saint. “This man came in last night and I was so flustered I--” 

“What man?” Mr. Torveld asked, immediately feeling silly for the pang of jealousy he felt. 

“A drunk man! He came in here and tried to grab me. I was so upset that I didn’t correctly lock up the vestibule. I’m so sorry.” Towards the end of his statement, he had begun to choke up. 

“Oh, my dear boy,” Mr. Torveld said, embracing him. Usually, Laurent shied away from even casual touches. Friendly pats on the back had been shrugged away from; quick touches of his arm as Mr. Torveld passed him in the store were met with apprehension. This time, though, Laurent allowed Mr. Torveld to hold him as he cried. “It’s all insured, Laurent. What matters is that you’re safe.” 

Too soon, Laurent pulled away. His lovely face was blotchy and, with his index finger (slender and elegant, like a pianist’s, Mr. Torveld thought), he caught a final tear rolling out of his eye. 

“Mr. Torveld, I don’t think I can work here any longer. This is all too scary,” he said, his voice still quaking a little. It was obvious to Mr. Torveld that Laurent was trying very hard to be brave. 

“Oh, Laurent, I would be so sad to see you go. Will you do me a favor? Go home, take the week off, and think it over? Let me call my car for you.” 

Laurent shook his head, his lip quivering. “No, sir. I need to walk. I need the fresh air.” 

“Be safe!” Mr. Torveld called after him, just as that radiant head of hair turned the corner.

** vi. **

Laurent checked his watch--a vintage Piaget with a navy blue leather strap, not particularly flashy but valued somewhere around €50,000, which he owned as a practicality, not a luxury. In a pinch, an expensive watch is as good as cash, and in Laurent’s profession, you needed contingencies for your contingencies--and was pleased with how quickly and smoothly the whole job had gone. Jord and Orlant would be back in Vere now, the jewels over the border and in someone else’s hands. Impossible to trace back to them.

Presently, Laurent was boarding a train to Antwerp for a job with slightly less-desirable partners--Lazar, who wasn’t terrible but was undisciplined, and Aimeric, who, in Laurent’s opinion, was too green to be on a big job and likely to get them caught--but he didn’t decide who he worked with, the Council did. 

The trip from Paris to Antwerp was rather long, but Laurent did not much mind this. He liked being alone. Digging his headphones and notebook out of his messenger bag, he settled in for the two-hour journey. Yo-Yo Ma, playing Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites, drowned out the unnervingly liminal sounds of the train as Laurent began to scribble out his proposal to the Council.


	2. Pollyannaish

** "Fate is cruel but maybe not random." --Donna Tartt **

** i. **

Crown Prince Damianos of Akielos liked to keep his employees close. He was downright chummy with them if the accounts from his retired members of staff were to be believed. He kept his staff quite small, though, and planned to hire a famous Akeilon restaurant called Delpha to supply the waitstaff and food for his engagement party.

Laurent was frankly suspicious with how much information about the day-to-day administration of the Ios palace was simply public record. Minutes for daily meetings (usually too insignificant for the future-king to attend) were uploaded to an archive on the government website, where anyone could access them, and, if they were diligent enough, could piece together a very thorough picture of how the place operated. This level of transparency was probably a good practice, in general. It certainly created a relationship of trust between the prince and his people. It’s a good practice, assuming no one detail-oriented with a head for crime decides to rob the palace, that is. 

“This would be a standard three-man job,” Laurent said, concluding his presentation to the Council. He began passing around folders for each Council member containing his full agenda. “I have prepared an itemized list of all the things of value in the palace. I will need a few months to be hired by the restaurant Prince Damianos intends to employ for his party and to distinguish myself there, enough Rohypnol for the guards in the security room, and a vehicle for a quick escape that we can torch as soon as we make it across the border.” 

“This is rather impressive, Laurent,” said Councilmember Herode. 

“The only thing you’ve impressed upon me,” said Laurent’s uncle, the unofficial leader who had earned the nickname Regent after Laurent’s father died, “is how presumptuous you can be.” 

“Uncle, I have been doing this practically all my life,” Laurent said. “I mean no presumption. I mean only to point out a great opportunity for us. Just look at the list. His consort is being lent paintings from the Louvre, the Met, and the Hague! Not to mention the things they have there at all times.” 

Councilmember Guion, torn between his greed and his sycophancy, managed to say, “We could use this plan as a jumping-off point. Discuss it amongst ourselves?” 

Regent, thumbing through the papers in his folder and coming to the list of valuables, said, “Very well. Laurent, we will let you know as soon as we’ve made a decision.” 

Respectfully, Laurent gave a small bow and turned to leave. His back to the Council, he could not help but crack a huge grin. The payload was too huge for anyone to pass on. And, because of a certain stunt that Govart had--successfully, by dumb fucking luck--pulled last year in Dubai wherein he drove a car through the glass doors of a jewelry store in broad daylight, no one could deem it too risky. Laurent, realizing it was perhaps naive to feel this good about the job before it was even in its infancy, went to the pâtisserie to celebrate anyway.

** ii. **

“You live like a nun,” Nicaise said, walking unannounced into Laurent’s unfinished loft, an open space with exposed brick in an up-and-coming (so said the realtor) part of Arles in a building that had been a textile factory at the turn of the last century.

“I gave you a key for emergencies, Nicaise,” Laurent said, setting down his book and rolling off his mattress. “Being bored is not an emergency.” 

In truth, Laurent was feigning his annoyance. Every moment Nicaise spent here was a moment he spent away from Laurent’s uncle, who had made it his philanthropic duty to take in beautiful young orphan boys ages ten to fourteen. And Laurent knew firsthand how those poor orphans were meant to repay Regent for the food in their bellies and the roof over their heads. The thought of it almost made him wrinkle his nose in disgust. But he was an expert at schooling his face by now. 

“You have three different kinds of pears in your kitchen but no alcohol. You’re the only grown-up I know who doesn’t smoke. I heard you’ve never been on a date. Like a nun.” 

“I’m too shy to go on dates,” Laurent drawled, rounding the corner into the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I can take you to McDonald’s. I heard the Happy Meal comes with the most delightful little toy.” 

“Fuck you. But also, if you’re offering, I do want to go to McDonald’s.” 

Laurent shrugged on his woolen peacoat and wrapped a scarf around his neck. “It’s two stops away on the train.” 

The Arles train was a relic from the brief period before dissolution when Vere had dipped her toes in communism--all its infrastructure was Brutalist in style, which contrasted the primarily Gothic Arles rather strangely.

“I hate the train,” Nicaise said. An elderly woman had pinched his little cherubic cheek as she boarded, which was common practice. Since everything had gone to hell, children had become less and less common (who wants to bring a child into this political climate?), and the ones that existed belonged to everyone. This was something Laurent liked to remember when he was young and lacking in love. He could slip out of his uncle’s house and suddenly an old woman would approach and ask if he’d eaten. Men playing chess in the park would ask him to sit down for a game. He had liked the attention back then. But as he had grown less interesting to his uncle, so, too, had the people of Arles stopped loving him this way. He almost longed for that woman to come back and, though he hated being touched, to pinch _his_ cheek as well. 

“You’re, what, fifteen? It’ll end soon.” As soon as Laurent said it, he regretted it. Panic made Nicaise’s eyes wide for a brief second. Then he was back to himself--flippant, not a care in the world.

“I asked Regent if I could start doing jobs,” Nicaise said. This wasn’t a change of subject; Laurent could see the progression of thought: _I’m fifteen, and soon Regent will notice. I’m fifteen, and soon I will be out on the streets. I’m fifteen with no money and no home and I need a way to support myself._

“It’s a good gig if you can hack it. I started jobs at fourteen, but my father was teaching me much earlier. I practically grew up in a getaway car.” Laurent said as they stepped onto the train platform. 

“I know,” Nicaise said, his pretty face twisted in contemplation. “Regent told me no.” 

“That’s a shame. It’s not up to him, though. I could suggest it to the Council.” 

At the restaurant, Laurent ordered a milkshake and a meal for Nicaise and went to sit down across from him at the table the younger of the two had chosen. 

“I did a job in Manila and you know what they served at the McDonald’s there? Spaghetti,” Laurent said conversationally, though he wouldn’t be caught dead eating anything so processed. He could barely stand even being in the vicinity of all this grease. The fact that he was sitting on a ridiculously-shaped plastic seat with the scent of fried food surely soaking into his hair and clothes was a testament to just how much affection he held for Nicaise. 

Nicaise, solemnly ripping up paper napkins, did not react. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. My voice cracked last week. Regent wasn’t there, thank Christ.” 

“Hey! You know I bought that whole building I live in, right?” 

“They didn’t pay _you_ to take that monstrosity?” 

“There are other floors,” Laurent said, ignoring Nicaise’s quip. “The one I live on is the one I outfitted with electricity and plumbing and all that, but I could renovate another floor. If you don’t mind living in a nunnery, that is.” 

“Really?” Nicaise asked, perking up. 

“If I could get you out of there today without pissing off Regent, I would,” Laurent said apologetically. 

“It’s not so bad,” Nicaise muttered. Laurent knew from experience that this was a lie, but Nicaise’s spirits seemed lifted considerably. Relieved, Nicaise tore into his burger with the sort of enthusiasm only a growing boy can have for something so grease-soaked.

** iii. **

Laurent had asked his contractor--the same one who he’d hired to renovate the floor below his--to affix wrought iron letters above the entrance of his building reading: THE CONVENT. That would amuse Nicaise, he thought. It was as he was supervising this, the workmen attaching the first N, that he got an incoming call from Regent.

“We’ve come to a decision. Tomorrow morning, eight.” Then there was a beep, indicating that Regent had hung up without waiting for an answer. 

What a loathsome, self-important voice his uncle had. Still, it was a good sign that he had not outright said no. A better sign yet that he’d gotten a call and wasn’t passed up entirely, as he thought might happen, Regent taking Laurent’s idea and putting his goons to the task. He had Herode to thank for that, he was sure, and he practically danced into the house in Old Arles where the Council held meetings. 

“Laurent,” Councilman Audin began. “It’s very unusual for someone to approach the Council with an idea, as you’re well aware. It’s our job to have the ideas.” 

“But,” said Herode, “given who your father was, I daresay we shouldn’t have expected anything less. And this plan is masterful--” 

Regent cleared his throat to cut off Herode. “You said you want this to be a standard three-man job. We’ve denied this request. We think the payload would be exponential if we put an extra man on the job. You can pick one man for your team. The rest, we will assign.” 

“Jord,” Laurent said automatically.

“Very well,” Regent said. “We are also assigning Lazar and Govart--” 

“ _Govart_?” Laurent protested. “I have not forgotten about the incident in Dubai. I’m not sure I trust his judgment.” 

“You will do well to remember your place,” Regent snapped. “And furthermore, there was no _incident_. When you make a clean getaway, it’s called a job.” 

“Whether it was ‘clean’ is up for debate,” Laurent retorted. 

Hastily, Herode interjected, “We’ll send you a dossier with the changes we’ve made to your existing agenda. For now, we want you to go home and apply for a job at that place the prince is hiring his waitstaff from.” 

“You’re dismissed,” Regent said, and Laurent turned to leave. 

“You might be ready to take over as the leader sooner than we thought,” Laurent heard Herode call after him. “I, for one, wouldn’t mind an early retirement.” 

It wasn’t until he was out of the house and around the corner that he allowed himself to slump over. Regent, he was certain, _would_ mind an early retirement. In theory, their little crime syndicate had no ideology and shared everything equally. Everyone had gotten a paycheck from the job Laurent did in Paris, and, yes, Laurent had gotten a paycheck from that idiotic solo mission Govart had done in Dubai. This was true now and had been true when Laurent’s father had founded the group. But Laurent had long suspected Regent of involving their organization in morally repugnant ventures—namely, trafficking club drugs like Rohypnol—without consulting the rest of the Council. Stealing shiny rocks from rich assholes was one matter, enabling rapists was another entirely. It had actually been why Laurent had suggested drugging the guards in the security room rather than the much-cleaner and simpler task of overriding the surveillance cameras: it was his way of very subtly letting Regent know that he was on to him. 

But Herode’s suggestion coupled with Laurent making his suspicions plain to Regent amounted to a bold-faced threat against his uncle. Laurent would have to watch his step.

** iv. **

“This plan is...disconcerting,” Jord frowned as he flipped through the dossier, sitting on a stool in Laurent’s kitchen. He was trying not to offend Laurent, but there was no real way around it. There were fucking problems with the job.

“The first thing my father said to me about this line of work,” Laurent said, plucking a grape from the charcuterie board on his counter, “is you should never spend more than two minutes on the actual robbery. Get in, get out. And what does Regent tell us to do? Tells us to spend _two hours_ robbing the fucking Ios palace. There’s only one getaway vehicle! How much shit are we supposed to take?” 

Jord breathed a sigh of relief. “So that wasn’t your idea.” 

Laurent shot him a withering look. “Of course not. I was planning on getting the Crown Jewels and a few select paintings. Stuff that people might not even notice being missing for a day or two! Regent wants us to clear out the whole palace like we’re a fucking moving company.” 

“It’s not our style,” Jord agreed. “The upside of that is that INTERPOL won’t know it was us.” 

“INTERPOL wouldn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground,” Laurent sniffed. This was something Jord loved about Laurent: he was always the smartest, most confident person in the room, and by earning Laurent’s approval, Jord was smart and confident by association. When Laurent would whisper a scornful observation into Jord’s ear, his scalp would prick, so pleased was he with having the privilege of knowing what received Laurent’s scorn. 

Despite being the only two people in the apartment, Jord lowered his voice conspiratorially and said, “Well, a good trait in our trade is the ability to improvise.” 

Understanding immediately where Jord was going, Laurent answered, “Yes. Who’s to say there won’t be unforeseen circumstances that will cause us to only obtain a select few priceless items?” 

“But Govart--” Jord began before realizing that he had nothing to say. Lazar, keen on dissent for the sake of it, was unlikely to bat an eye if they told him they were deviating from the official plan. Govart, on the other hand, was Regent’s dog. 

“Yes, he does pose a bit of difficulty. I don’t suppose we could drop him off at a particularly elaborate playground and tell him it’s the palace, could we?” 

Jord, eating a slice of cheese on a cracker, nearly choked as he laughed. “If anyone could pull a trick like that, it’s you. I had a tough time keeping a straight face when you convinced Orlant to wear that wig.” 

Laurent, who enjoyed being praised but was loath to admit it, and would never be so cruel as to give Jord the wrong idea by acknowledging that he liked it, nodded solemnly. 

“I think,” Laurent said finally, “Govart’s conspicuousness could be used against him.”

** v. **

It was apparent, at least to Lauren, that Regent was trying to get him caught. No one in their right mind would look at the dossier Laurent had received and come to a different conclusion. Regent had made himself look like a reasonable fellow, allowing Laurent to pick one of the men on the job. What he’d really done, though, was attempt to kill two birds with one stone. Regent knew Laurent would pick Jord. Worshipful Jord, who would go against Regent’s orders if Laurent asked him to, would be caught as well. And Lazar--too rowdy, chaos-prone and distractible--was a bad thief, plain and simple. Getting rid of him would be doing everyone a favor.

That was unkind. Lazar just needed to learn some discipline, something no one seemed willing to teach him. One thing Laurent couldn’t figure out, though: what was Govart there for? Perhaps Regent really did want something to show for the job, ordering Govart to go ahead and steal whatever he could get his hands on while the guards are busy arresting Laurent and Jord and Lazar. Or, stranger still, perhaps Regent wanted Govart to be caught as well. There was a piece of the puzzle Laurent was sure he was missing. 

“Are you listening to me, Veretian?” snapped Makedon, the jingoistic Akeilon owner of Delpha, who liked to pick on Laurent because he was foreign. 

“Yes, sir,” Laurent answered in his best customer-service voice, though he had not been listening even a little bit. Makedon had assembled a group of about fifteen waiters and waitresses and had been going over the hors d'oeuvres that were to be served at Prince Damianos’s engagement party for more than an hour. Laurent was not sure how many times he could hear the words “duck foie gras bites with fig chutney” before he went insane. 

“Good, because this group is going to be the front-facing staff. You’ll be serving the VIPs, including the prince himself,” Makedon said. This elicited surprised and thrilled gasps from the small crowd and a shocked whimper from Erasmus, standing next to Laurent.

“Why did he only choose the blonds?” Laurent whispered to the man next to him. 

“The prince has a type. I bet he specifically requested blonds. Have you seen his consort? Her hair is as light as yours,” Erasmus--who had been hired at the same time as Laurent and had decided that this, by default, made them friends--whispered back. 

_That’s about the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard_ , Laurent did not say back. Prince Damianos was so revered here in Akeilos that he was almost on the level of a deity, and Laurent did not wish to draw any extra attention to himself by openly criticizing the monarchy. 

“This is all very exciting, isn’t it? I can’t believe that in one month I’ll be _this close_ to the future king,” Erasmus said after the group had been dismissed, making a gesture with his arms.

“Maybe you’ll even catch his eye,” Laurent said nonchalantly, examining his nail bed. Erasmus’s face turned bright red. 

“That wouldn’t be very professional of me,” Erasmus said, bowing his head. “But it’s nice to dream.” 

_Pollyannaish_ , Laurent thought disdainfully. But he’d developed a sort of fondness for Erasmus. He felt as though he was looking at an alternate reality by seeing someone his age allowed to be sweet and soft and kind. Looking at Erasmus, you could tell he’d been loved by the people who raised him and encouraged in his gentleness. Laurent imagined a younger Erasmus picking flowers for his mother, falling asleep on a sibling’s shoulder, sweet and bashful and unhurt. This was someone Laurent could have been.

_Pollyannaish_ , he thought again, this time with regret instead of disdain.

** vi. **

Laurent was an early riser as a rule. He never had a hangover to nurse or a lover to tactfully get rid of in the morning, and so, during his time in Ios, he liked to stroll the cobblestone pathways in the historic district as dawn broke over the city.

It was during one of these walks that Laurent’s burner phone buzzed in his pocket. Recognizing the phone number for Delpha, he hesitantly answered. 

“Laurent? I’m surprised to get you. I’ve been getting everyone else’s voicemail.” It was Makedon, his voice sounding odd, and it had not escaped Laurent that he had called him by his name rather “Veretian.” 

“Well, it is a bit early, sir,” Laurent said mildly. 

“Quite right, quite right,” Makedon answered distractedly. 

“Sir?” 

“Listen, can you come in around nine this morning?” 

Laurent would have said no were it not for Makedon’s strange behavior, which left him curious. “Of course, sir. What’s all this about?” 

“Great, I’ll see you then,” Makedon said, hanging up without answering Laurent’s question. 

When Laurent arrived at Delpha, twenty minutes late with a frappé and no planned excuse for tardiness, he was first greeted by Erasmus, openly weeping and holding another employee, who was also weeping. Not good with this sort of thing and not curious enough to deal with this, whatever this was, he turned on his heel and nearly made it out the door before he heard a tentative, “Laurent?” 

_Fuck,_ he thought. He said, “Erasmus. My God! What’s happened? You look a fright.” 

“I-it’s the King Theomedes. He p-passed last night.” 

This news was uninteresting. The king had been positively ancient and gravely ill for at least the last year. Even Laurent knew that, and he did not care for celebrity news. 

“Now that Laurent has decided to join us,” Makedon spat as he emerged from his office with the sort of venom only someone in pain could muster, “We shall begin.” 

Laurent was tempted to mutter an apology but decided against it. 

“As many of you know, the Exalted King Thomedes, my dear friend since childhood, died in his sleep last night. My godson, Damen, will be making an announcement in two hours. He has asked us to cater both the private wake and the larger funeral reception.” 

Laurent was at once glad he’d answered the phone--this was an invaluable, unprecedented opportunity for reconnaissance--and annoyed that he had to spend the foreseeable future with a bunch of lachrymose Akeilons as they mourned. 

_The king kicked it. I’m working on what that means for the job. Probably good news for us, though_ , Laurent texted Jord.

Jord had had a late night if the moans from the adjacent room--starting at midnight and ending at a quarter after, then starting again two hours later and ending who-knows-when--were to be believed. He wouldn’t be up for hours yet.

** vii. **

It had not occurred to Damen how fast things must move after the death of a loved one. Funerals are typically three days after the date of death, and the wake a day before that, and that gave Damen essentially no time to process what was happening before different flower arrangements were shoved in his face. His father was dead, how could anyone expect him to care whether there were lilies on his father’s casket as opposed to roses?

“Lilies,” Jo said decisively. She had taken command of the situation, something Damen was unspeakably grateful for. 

“I need to call Makedon,” Damen said, swallowing four ibuprofen capsules. “And Nikandros.” 

“You really should be taking aspirin instead. With our father’s heart being what it was, you need to be taking it daily,” Kastor said. This was something he’d been pestering Damen about for months now and Damen had begun to tune him out when he started talking about it. 

“I called Makedon first thing in the morning. Nikandros is already on our jet headed this way,” Jo said, all business with her Alexander McQueen pencil dress and perfectly-applied lipstick. You would never suspect that she’d stayed up the entire night comforting Damen who, somewhere after his sixth whiskey, had begun watching his father’s old speeches on YouTube while crying. 

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.

“I’ve written down a few ideas for the announcement. People will have questions about succession which I think you should address right off the bat. You father’s speechwriters have been calling all day, but I think the people would appreciate it if you spoke from the heart.” 

“They would,” Damen agreed, reaching for Jo’s hand and kissing the inside of her delicate wrist.

** viii. **

There were only so many times Damen could hear the words, “I’m sorry for your loss,” before things started to lose meaning, and so, at the wake, he’d begun to watch a trio of children from his spot in the receiving line who looked about as depressed as he felt. No doubt they belonged to a delegate and were bored to tears, all sitting miserably together on a bench without so much as a toy to keep them occupied.

A waiter broke off from what he was doing with an empty tray and knelt down to eye-level with the children. From his apron pocket, he produced three caramels--Damen recognized the candy from its blue wrapping--and did a sleight of hand trick to make them disappear and then reappear behind each child’s ear. This thrilled the three children, one of whom was so delighted that she leapt up to give the waiter a hug. 

At first startled, the man blushed and patted her on the head before she stepped back. It was at this point that Damen realized that the waiter was beautiful--almost alarmingly so. Since falling in love with Jokaste, he rarely noticed such things. He was, as Nikandros had once put it, “incorrigibly monogamous.” 

The waiter said something that excited the children and all three of them bounded off. The waiter covered his eyes theatrically as the smallest of the children hid (poorly) nearby and the other two, older and better at the game, ran out of Damen’s line of vision into a hallway. 

_Ah, hide-and-seek_ , Damen thought.

When the waiter had finished counting and opened his eyes, it was clear that he saw the smallest child, for he dramatically circled the child’s hiding spot, checking everywhere but the actual location of the boy. 

The boy found this all very funny and the waiter shrugged his shoulders exaggeratingly as if to say, _I guess the kid is invisible,_ and stalked off to presumably find the others. 

Damen hadn’t thought about it before, but he admired people who had an easy way with children. And he really admired the kindness it took the waiter to stop what he was doing to entertain a few forlorn kids.

** ix. **

Laurent had been working for Delpha for three months, during which time he’d been legally paid somewhere around €4000, an insultingly low sum considering how physically strenuous being a waiter is and how much money the restaurant seemed to make; the first night he waited tables at the restaurant, he’d presented a bill to a large table he’d served that totaled €3881.75.

“That entire establishment is a case study in the Marxist theory of exploitation,” he’d said dramatically one night when he returned for the evening to the Ios townhouse they’d rented specifically for this job, tossing the two waitstaff uniforms he’d surreptitiously swiped out of the supply closet on the coffee table in the living room.

“What the hell does that even mean?” Lazar asked, not looking up from his phone. 

“It means he thinks he doesn’t get paid enough at his fake waiter job,” Jord said. And then, “This uniform is too small for Govart.” 

“I know,” Laurent, who had purposely stolen a uniform one size too small for Govart just so he could take petty pleasure in watching Govart uncomfortably shift around in too-tight clothes, said.

The job was happening in three days and they were tying up loose strings and setting things into place. Because of a game of hide-and-seek he had played with a group of children at the king’s wake, Laurent had a fairly accurate idea of the layout of the palace--which spots were off-limits to guests, which rooms were locked and which were unlocked and, most importantly, where security was positioned. Lazar had purchased two vans--one was an extremely ugly old Polish monstrosity in DayGlo yellow that gave Laurent a headache just to look at, and the other a less-ugly but equally clunky Mitsubishi. The latter was sitting just across the border but the former (which Jord had dubbed the Yellow Horror) was sitting in the townhouse’s driveway and had nearly given Laurent an aneurysm when he first saw it. 

“Don’t you think it’s a little conspicuous?” he had asked dangerously. Jord, next to him, looked uneasy. 

“We’re torching it the second we get into Vere. What does it matter?” 

“I suppose I should be thanking you, then, for procuring something so worthy of arson!” Laurent had said, stomping off. 

From a distance, he could hear Jord ask, “What part of ‘nondescript’ was confusing to you, Lazar?” 

But the Yellow Horror was only one minor setback in an otherwise foolproof plan. Govart had made himself rather scarce and completely useless--something that would have annoyed Laurent deeply if he hadn’t planned on shirking Regent’s agenda entirely (Lazar had said “Fuck yeah! Chaos! Anarchy!” when Laurent and Jord had informed him that they had an agenda of their own. As the getaway driver, it wasn’t like Lazar’s part in the scheme was altered very much). 

Laurent was tentatively optimistic. This could turn out alright.

Laurent did not know that at that very moment, Govart was in his room in that same townhouse, unpacking his Glock and silencer from his suitcase and trying to determine where the best spot on his person was to conceal them both until he had to use them on the prince and the little prissy blond.


	3. Cyanide

**“Ladies and gentlemen, I am now locked up in a handcuff that has taken a British mechanic five years to make. I do not know whether I am going to get out of it or not, but I can assure you I am going to do my best.” --Harry Houdini, London Hippodrome, March 17th, 1904**

** i. **

Erasmus had been too nervous to work the wake or the funeral--he’d thrown up in the alleyway as Laurent, leaning against the brick wall, read a thin blue paperback.

“Listen to this: ‘Have you ever seen a stuffed genius? I am happy. At times like this, even love is pleasant.’” 

Between heaves, Erasmus looked up at Laurent, who handed him a small bottle of water. “What?” Erasmus asked, perplexed. Laurent had not commented on the sick as Erasmus had expected; The water, too, was an unforeseen kindness. 

“It’s a famous Korean novella about colonialism. That’s simplistic, but that’s the elevator pitch, I suppose.” 

Erasmus, queasy, straightened himself up to look at Laurent questioningly, almost like he was crazy, and Laurent laughed softly at his expression. In general, Erasmus had a high threshold for aggravation, but the nerves and nausea had made him understandably cranky.

“What--” _dry heave_ “--are you saying?” Erasmus asked.

“I’m saying that occupying a nation is bad,” Laurent answered, his nose still buried in the paperback. “So being too sick to go to the state-run funeral of an oppressor who occupied another nation maybe isn’t such a terrible thing.” 

Here was something about Laurent that Erasmus could not understand: Laurent’s thoughts always went from point A to point B, and then, rapidly, all the way to point Z with no warning and no way to easily follow. His morals and convictions were mysterious--founded in philosophies entirely alien to Erasmus, forged under hostile conditions. There was something cruel about the way he carried himself that was maybe intentional; Erasmus had seen Laurent when he thought no one was looking (placid-faced as he walked to work, stopping to pat a tied-up dog and saying something in a silly-sounding, high-pitched Veretian). Looking at Laurent, Erasmus saw him, for just a split second, with a strange clarity--the kind you can only get from savage hangovers or blinding headaches or puking your guts out, the kind that comes when you’re physically exhausted and so everything seems very apparent. Then, because it was a very fleeting glimpse, it was gone in an instant. 

“You’re a good friend, Laurent,” Erasmus said laboriously, feeling a little as though they were having completely separate conversations from one another. 

Something sad and stormy passed over Laurent’s lovely face then. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” interrupted Makedon from the door that led from the kitchen to the alley. “You’re sick?” 

“No,” Erasmus said as he dry heaved once more. Bad timing. 

Makedon had sent him home. “I have enough to worry about,” his boss had grumbled as Erasmus’s cheeks burned in humiliation and Laurent apologetically helped Erasmus to gather his things from his locker.

This time around, for the engagement party, Erasmus had managed to keep the nausea at bay, thanks in part to the spliff he’d shared with one of the dishwashers and some deep-breathing exercises he’d gotten from the internet. 

They’d been setting things up inside the palace since late afternoon--Laurent had even been smart enough to prop the back door from the kitchen open with a brick, making everyone swear to secrecy that he’d done so: “It’s ridiculous that they make us go through that whole security check every time we have to run out for a cigarette or to get something from one of the catering vans,” he had said as the rest of the staff nodded in agreement. 

Unbeknownst to Erasmus, because of the back door being open, two extra men were able to slip in without doing the “whole security check” and were hidden in plain sight--one shifting uncomfortably in his too-tight uniform, a handgun and silencer strapped to his sweaty back, the other silently creeping off into the palace, working efficiently at pilfering what he and Laurent had agreed to take.

** ii. **

Erasmus was in rare form. He was being clingy--annoyingly, remarkably so--and hadn’t left Laurent’s side for even a moment. He’d even gone so far as to nervously touch Laurent’s sleeve when the guests had begun to show up, which made Laurent nervous not only because of his general dislike of casual touches, but also because he had a knife sheath on a leather belt strapped around his midsection (a practicality, like the Piaget on his wrist) and, though it wasn’t too visible in the black button-up he wore over it, it would certainly be noticeable if Erasmus’s friendly touches got slightly more adventurous.

But Erasmus, nervous as he was, was also gentle, and noticed how Laurent stiffened under his fingertips. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled diffidently, releasing his grip on the shirtsleeve but remaining unnervingly close. “I’m just so flustered.” 

“It’s alright. I’ll need some fresh air, I think, before the guests of honor arrive,” said Laurent as kindly as he could. He’d been stressed out since Erasmus started following him around hours ago. It would be rather difficult to complete a job and make a clean getaway with a slightly neurotic waiter at arm’s length. 

“I can come with you,” Erasmus offered. 

“No! No, it’s alright,” Laurent said, a little too quickly. “I’ll just be a moment.” 

He weaved quickly and unnoticed around several guests, slipping into a nearby hallway. He found a balcony overlooking the ocean and stepped outside to clear his thoughts. He hadn’t been lying about needing fresh air.

** iii. **

“Playing hooky?” Laurent heard a voice he did not recognize say as he looked out over the Mediterranean Sea. The sun had gone down hours ago and the ocean was inky black under the night sky.

“Another waiter has recently decided that I’m his best friend and I’m not quite ready to braid his hair and play Truth or Dare at our inevitable slumber party just yet, I’m afraid,” Laurent responded without looking up. He heard a soft chuckle coming from the intruder. And, because he did not care if some rich asshole considered him strange, he began thinking out loud: “What do you think Homer meant when he called this sea wine-dark? ‘And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea, I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure. Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now in the waves and wars.’ I’ve always considered Odysseus to be a cockroach, but God _damn_ do I know what he feels like.” 

“Surely the party isn’t _that_ unpleasant,” the voice said kindly. The joke was funny enough to convince Laurent to turn around, where he was met, horrifyingly, with the gaze of Prince Damianos. 

Laurent swore in Veretian. This was bad. This was so, so bad. Already, he was imagining INTERPOL questioning the prince:

“Do you remember what they looked like, Exalted?” 

“Well, yes, actually, one of them stood on a balcony he most definitely wasn’t supposed to be on and waxed poetic about the fucking Odyssey. Got a pretty good look at him.”

Prince Damianos, mistaking Laurent’s utter mortification for starstruckedness and very annoyingly taking pleasure in it said, “You’re Veretian? I spent some time in Vere. My name is Damen, by the way.” 

As if Laurent didn’t know. Deciding the easiest exit strategy was to be as meek as possible, he did his very best impression of Erasmus and sweetly said, “I apologize for my momentary failure to provide you service. Would you like me to bring you something? If I may be so bold, the duck foie gras bites with fig chutney are to die for.” He had begun edging toward the door and, though it was possible Prince Damianos had not heard it, there was just a hair of panic in his voice. 

He made it into the hallway and around the corner, about to turn the knobs of heavy-looking oak double doors (in the opposite direction of the kitchen) before he heard the prince, behind him, laugh. “I highly doubt you’ll find any duck foie gras in my library.” Regent would love how poorly this was going. Jord, at least, had to be doing better. 

It occurred to him that, if he could get the prince to show him the library, Laurent might be able to pocket the signed first edition of _The Old Man and the Sea_ Prince Damianos was said to have in his collection, which he’d keep as a treat for himself considering the fresh hell he was going through. 

“I’m sorry, I’m just so flustered,” Laurent said bashfully, echoing Erasmus, but still turning the knobs and swinging the doors open.

What he saw on the other side of those doors made him laugh out loud, the impression of Erasmus he was doing entirely forgotten. The prince’s consort--what was her name? Jocelyn? Josephine?--had her skirt hiked high and the prince’s brother’s head ( _Kastor is his name_ , Laurent thought. And then: _How the hell can I remember his name but not hers?_ ) between her legs. Jolene! No, that wasn’t it. But he was getting closer. 

“This night is not going my way,” Laurent said. 

“Jo?” Prince Damianos called out. The warmth in his voice was gone. Laurent turned to look at the expression of heartbreak on the prince’s face; he seemed to be cycling through the five stages of grief at an alarming speed and, like the rats that fought to the death at Pont Neuf, Laurent felt the perverse desire to watch the scene unfold. 

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Kastor said, his chin slick with her wetness, at the same time the woman said, “I can explain.” 

“Explain,” the prince said, deadly calm. 

The woman hopped off of the desk she’d been seated on and strode confidently towards them.

“Why is there a waiter here?” she asked. 

“I’m hardly the one on trial,” Laurent responded incredulously. Joanna? No, he was getting farther away. 

“You’re telling me, Damen, that you snuck off to the library with this young thing,” she began, gesturing to Laurent in an insultingly glib manner, “Who looks like he was made in a factory specifically to be your whore, by the way, to what? Show him your first edition of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_? Give me a break.” 

Fuck _The Old Man and the Sea_ , Laurent wanted that. The prince’s oscillating facial expressions landed on denial and he said, “You can’t possibly be trying to turn this around on me.” 

“I’d be careful who you called a whore,” Laurent said, because he was quite enjoying the show and wanted to stoke the fire just a little before he snuck off. This was actually a very good diversion now that he thought about it. “Of the two of us, I’m the one who has managed to keep my panties on this evening. What’s that saying about glass houses? You shouldn’t live in one if you’re fucking your fiance’s brother.” 

“And a sharp tongue, too? Well, you always did like them feisty,” the woman said. 

Now, the prince was angry. “Am I having a fucking stroke, Jokaste? Did I or did I not just walk in on the sight of my brother performing oral sex on you?” 

Jokaste! Laurent would never have guessed that. No matter now, since he had stepped to the side so he was no longer between the prince and Jokaste. The two, it seemed to Laurent as he tiptoed away, were on the precipice of an all-out shouting match. 

Then, after a long pause during which Laurent was able to get out of sight, he heard the prince’s voice, too far away for him to make out the words, speaking surprisingly calmly. He found a large guest bathroom where he pulled out his burner to text Jord. 

_Everything went tits up on my end. You wouldn’t believe what I just saw. How are you and Govart fairing?_

Almost immediately, Jord sent three texts in quick succession:

_Govarts fucking missing._

__Lazar has the paintings you wanted in the van._ _

___Working on jewels._ _ _

__Govart was fucking missing? Laurent splashed his face with water. Could this night be any more disastrous? Feeling a life-ending headache coming on, he rooted through the medicine cabinet, finding only a bottle of aspirin. He popped the lid off and shook three pills into his hand and was about to dry-swallow them when he caught a whiff of something. Almonds._ _

__Carefully, he put the tablets back in the bottle and pocketed it. He swayed slightly before collecting himself. He needed to find Govart. He needed to make it to the getaway van. And, despite hating alcohol, he needed a fucking drink._ _

__Taking a deep breath and deciding that whatever the fuck was going on in the Ios Palace was leagues above his pay grade, he swung open the door and groaned when he saw the hulking mass that was the prince._ _

__“Oh, thank God I found you. My lawyer needs to see you,” he said, not showing an iota of distress. Impressive, considering the blow he was just dealt._ _

__“Me?” Laurent said._ _

__“Yes, we’ve got to draft up a nondisclosure agreement,” the prince said, already walking and clearly expecting Laurent to follow. “Of course, you’ll be compensating for signing it.”_ _

__“I don’t want your hush money,” Laurent said with perhaps more malice than was wise. “And as for your NDA, I already had to sign one just to work this event tonight. I assume it applies to cuckoldry as well.”_ _

__“I--” the prince paused, not insulted by Laurent’s lack of respect but, seemingly, a little amused by it, like how one might regard a hissing kitten._ _

__“I’m so glad you two are together,” came a voice from Laurent’s periphery. Govart, Glock in his hands, came into view. “Saves me some running around.”_ _

__Laurent, understanding the situation quicker than the prince, raised his hands in the air. He cursed himself for having his knife sheath under his shirt and in such a difficult place to access given the current situation. He cursed Akielos for its sparse decoration--nothing to grab and use as a weapon. And he cursed his uncle for setting up a situation wherein he would die dressed as a waiter._ _

__“You,” Govart said to the prince gesturing with his gun in his right hand and pulling a couple of zip ties out of his pocket with his left. “Tie up the waiter.”_ _

___The waiter_! _ _

__The prince’s eyes darted around, and Laurent could see he was going through the same thoughts Laurent had moments ago: no weapons in sight. Begrudgingly, he took the proffered zip ties, clearly still working out his next move._ _

__Rather than wait for that eventuality, Laurent sank to his knees, tearing open his shirt in the process, making a tremendous show of having a fit._ _

__“Christ. Can you tie that brat up already?” Govart snapped. “He’s faking it.”_ _

__Laurent rolled over, flashing his knife at the prince with a meaningful look. The prince understood and pulled Laurent back to his feet by his underarms, swiping the knife from him quickly, and fumbled with the nylon ties before spinning around very suddenly and lunging at Govart._ _

__The gun went off, making only a low whistling sound thanks to the silencer, embedding a bullet into the white marble of the wall as the prince drove the knife into Govart’s gut. It was an impressive stab, and suddenly Laurent thought, _Maybe all that military bravado wasn’t just for show afterall_. The gun, made difficult to hold onto due to the enormous silencer at its muzzle, and the knife inside of its owner, was knocked free of Govart’s hands._ _

__Perhaps Govart realized that the odds were against him. Anyone betting that they’d survive the situation would leave the knife in. Govart pulled it out, though, and made a move towards Laurent which the prince intercepted. The knife slashed through his forearm. Damianos hissed at the pain and Laurent took this opportunity to dive towards Govart’s knees, throwing him off balance. On the ground, Laurent straddled Govart, landing three punches before Govart wriggled to be the one on top. Govart wrapped his hands around Laurent’s throat and began to squeeze with all his might._ _

__But, just as quickly as Govart’s hands had found purchase around Laurent’s neck, they were removed. Laurent heard a sickly crack and stared without quite comprehending as Govart, neck at a terrible angle, fell to the side._ _

__Prince Damianos, lit from behind, looked like an action hero as he helped Laurent up._ _

__“Are you alright?” he asked Laurent._ _

__Laurent didn’t answer. His mind, going at 100 miles per hour, began making plans._ _

__“How strong are the currents this time of year?” he said after a minute of thinking._ _

__“ _What_?” the prince asked. Impatiently, Laurent pulled out his burner to look it up himself. _ _

__“Not as strong as I’d like but we’re short on options.” They couldn’t very well torch him with the Yellow Horror--INTERPOL was bound to find that, and if Regent caught wind of there being a body inside…._ _

__“You want to go _swimming_?”_ _

__Laurent pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are all Akielons this stupid? Is it just you? Pick him up. We’re throwing him over the side of the cliff.”_ _

__“No we aren’t. We’re calling INTERPOL. An attempt was just made on my life,” the prince said slowly, as though he considered Laurent to be a stark raving lunatic. “And, I don’t like to play this card, but I’m the Crown Prince. I outrank you. You can’t just order me around.”_ _

__Without answering, Laurent dug through the pockets of Govart’s slacks. He pulled out Govart’s wallet--of course he’d be stupid enough to have his real ID on him during a job--and a bright pink packet of lubricant._ _

__“‘Virgin-Again Anal Lube,’” Laurent read from the label. “Strawberry flavored. How charming.”_ _

__The prince made a disgusted face, as though the reason Govart wanted Laurent tied up was just occurring to him._ _

__“You’re interfering with a crime scene,” he said, though not as assertive as he had been before._ _

__“Who in your family takes aspirin?” Laurent asked, removing the bottle from his pocket. Before he could be met with further insolence from the prince, he uncapped the bottle and waved it under the prince’s nose._ _

__“It smells like cherries,” Prince Damianos said._ _

__“Close. It smells like almonds. Can you think of anything that smells like almonds?”_ _

__The prince stared at him blankly._ _

__“Let me start over. I found this in the bathroom. This is cyanide. Badly made cyanide, because if you make it correctly, it should be odorless. Let me ask you: has anyone in your family been very ill lately?” This was, of course, rhetorical._ _

__Prince Damianos, now understanding what Laurent was saying, looked stricken. “Kastor has been nagging me to start taking aspirin ever since my father’s first heart attack.”_ _

__“Well it looks like Kastor got impatient,” Laurent said. “What I can’t figure out is where--” Again, he had forgotten her name. Jonquille? That sounded wrong. “--your consort fits into all this. The point is, you can’t trust anybody right now.”_ _

__Laurent lazily walked to the spot where Govart’s gun had landed. He picked it up like one might pick up a dirty rag and inspected it._ _

__“You’re awfully smart for a waiter,” the prince said._ _

__“Believe it or not, _Exalted_ ,” Laurent sneered, “servants can and do have thoughts of their own.” _ _

__“That was pretty good fighting, too,” the prince said, this time narrowing his eyes._ _

__“Yes, yes, I contain multitudes,” Laurent said dismissively. “Now pick this bastard up so we can toss him and his gun into the sea.”_ _

__“No,” said the prince. “I’m going to call the royal guard and INTERPOL and have my brother arrested. And you’d better have a good reason for having a knife strapped to you at a royal event.”_ _

__“Fine,” Laurent said, palms up in surrender. It’d be easier if the prince got himself killed, wouldn’t it? Easier in theory. In practice, Laurent didn’t like the idea of actually letting someone die. So he added, “But I’ve never heard of a coup d'état conducted by just one usurper. Have you? I’m sure Julius Caesar had your level of confidence as he strolled into the Senate on the Ides of March.”_ _

__The prince faltered._ _

__“What did he mean, ‘I’m so glad you two are together’?” Prince Damianos asked, finally doing as he was told and scooping Govart up rather easily._ _

__“There’s a servant’s passageway close to here. Follow me,” Laurent said, ignoring his question._ _

__At the very least, knowing _that_ hadn’t raised the prince’s suspicions. Waiters were supposed to know that sort of thing. _ _

__“Won’t another servant see us?” the prince asked as they maneuvered through the narrow passage._ _

__“They’re all busy with your lavish party. Although I suspect your absence will be noticed unless your consort is covering for you.”_ _

__“She’s no longer my consort.”_ _

__“I highly doubt she’d want to make that public at this very moment,” Laurent said sensibly. “This hall eventually leads to a smoking area behind the palace, where we will dispose of this fellow.” Then, more hesitantly, he added, “I have a driver waiting there, actually.”_ _

__This made Prince Damianos stop dead in his tracks. “Why?” he asked carefully._ _

__Laurent grimaced. The truth was bound to come out anyway, and so, like ripping off a bandage, he quickly said, “I was planning on robbing you.”_ _

__The prince’s mouth fell open. He still had not taken a step forward, and Laurent, with some annoyance, said, “Can we please have this discussion as we walk?”_ _

__The prince looked down at his feet and, perhaps realizing that there was no better option, began moving again._ _

__“You realize I have superb security.”_ _

__Laurent rolled his eyes as they approached the exit. “So superb that a whole assassin and God-knows how much cyanide got through.” He decided not to mention the fact that _he_ had been the one to let the assassin in in the first place. _ _

__“You’re right. Of all the treachery I’ve experienced this evening, the betrayal of a waiter doesn’t sting so bad, actually.”_ _

__Laurent, willfully ignoring the prince’s petulant tone, said, “That’s the spirit.”_ _

__They burst into the warm, fragrant summer air. Lazar sat at the wheel of the Yellow Horror and Jord tapped his toe nervously, standing next to the open doors in the back. Upon seeing Laurent with the prince, both men gaped._ _

__“Make sure you throw him with a little force. We don’t want his body to land on the rocks, we want it in the water,” Laurent said._ _

__“Of course,” the prince said rather bitterly._ _

__“Can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?” Lazar shouted through the van’s window._ _

__“Do you have any liquor? Maybe some fucking Demerol?” Laurent asked just as Prince Damianos heaved Govart’s fat body over the railing and into the tumultuous ocean. Lazar complied, tossing a flask to Laurent._ _

__“Why do you have that? You’re supposed to be the driver,” Jord admonished._ _

__“I don’t actually want this,” Laurent said, handing the flask to the prince beside him who subsequently drank the entire thing in one pull._ _

__Laurent slid into the back of the van. “Are you coming, Exalted?”_ _

__The prince appeared as though he wanted to do anything but. He stood there looking lost for a second before he cocked his head to the side, looking past Laurent and at the stolen goods. “Is that a Georgia O’Keefe?”_ _

__“Lazar, let’s get going. It appears the prince has a deathwish,” Laurent said, and made to close the van’s door before Prince Damianos sighed and crouched down to step inside._ _


	4. Shooting the Buffalo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Thank you all so much for reading and commenting on the last few chapters. This chapter is a little serious and, as a content warning, it briefly discusses the Regent's abuse towards Laurent. This happens in part V if you wish to skip it. Enoy!

** i. **

Here is something that Damen knew with absolute certainty: the situation he currently found himself in was better than being killed, but only marginally so. He sat, back against the right side of a completely hideous chartreuse van, the rather deep slash on his forearm aching as the beautiful waiter--no, thief, Damen had to remind himself--casually read a well-loved copy of _The Things They Carried_ across from him. 

Damen, irritable in the hot van and overdressed, pulled off his dark red dinner jacket and examined his wound through the ruined sleeve of his button-up. 

The man next to him, average-looking and very, very incredulous, after several minutes of silence, finally said, “Laurent, what the fuck is going on?” 

So the thief had a name. 

“Improvisation, my dear Jord,” Laurent said insouciantly, lowering the book and marking his place in it with a navy blue ribbon. And then he began to explain.

** ii. **

“Here we are, gentlemen,” Lazar said, finally pulling over after three hours of insufferably jerky driving. It was a wonder Laurent still had the contents of his stomach inside him. 

“Thank Christ,” Laurent said, hopping out of the first van and unlocking the Mitsubishi they had parked across the Veretian border. “I’ve never wanted to light a single thing on fire more than I do the Yellow Horror.” 

Both Jord and Lazar began transferring the paintings and jewelry as Laurent, holding a sizable canister of lighter fluid, watched the prince, who had slipped out of the back holding his dinner jacket and was looking almost furtively at the stolen art. 

“You’re welcome to help, Hercules,” Jord said, gesturing with his chin towards the goods remaining in the van. 

“Oh, sure, why not add aiding and abetting to the list of new and exciting experiences I’ve had this evening?” the prince shot back. 

“I’d offer to let you experience arson but I’m afraid I don’t need any help,” Laurent said conversationally as the last of the goods were moved. He doused the inside of the first vehicle with the accelerant. “Burners, gentlemen?” 

Lazar and Jord both handed over their phones, Laurent adding his to the bunch. His real phone, an extremely old iPhone from a generation that still had a physical home button, had been in the glove compartment of the Mitsubishi for the last several days. 

Unceremoniously, he tossed the burners into the back of the van. Lazar pulled a second flask out of his breast pocket. 

“To the Yellow Horror,” he said, sticking the flask out in cheers. 

“May she burn in hell for all of eternity,” Laurent said as he lit his Zippo and tossed it into the back. Instantly, the thing was alight in flames.

The prince had moved in closer and stuck his hand out to receive the flask. After taking a long swig, he tossed his dinner jacket into the blaze. It seemed as though that simple act melted a bit of the ice between him, Jord, and Lazar. Laurent, however, was not so easily charmed.

** iii. **

Several hours later, the driver--he had introduced himself to Damen as Lazar--pulled up to a large brick building with enormous double-hung windows on the higher stories in a desolate neighborhood of Arles.

“Jord, be a friend and show my guest up. I’m going to fetch Paschal. I believe he’ll need stitches,” Laurent said, tossing a set of keys to Jord, sliding out of the van, and heading down the street without so much as a backward glance to check if his order was followed. 

Perplexed at having arrived at what looked to be an abandoned factory, Damen read the lettering atop the entrance: “THE CONVENT?” 

“I think it’s a joke about how the boss doesn’t fuck,” the driver said. 

“He’s not our boss,” Jord said, opening the van’s door. 

“‘Be a good friend and show my guest up,’” Lazar mocked. 

Jord rolled his eyes and changed the subject as he stood up. “You good taking all this stuff by yourself or do you want to wait until I’m done with this?” 

“I’m good. The faster I move this shit, the faster we can get chewed out about Govart’s accidental death.” With that, he winked exaggeratingly at Damen.

“Is that true?” Damen asked as Jord unlocked the front door and led him up several flights of stairs. 

“Is what true?” 

“That Laurent doesn’t--” he started. 

“Fuck? Hell if I know,” Jord answered as they approached an industrial door, large and metal. “People say he’s frigid. I’ve known him since he was fifteen and he’s never dated anyone.” 

Jord unlocked the door and swung it open into a surprisingly beautiful minimalistic loft. The double-hung windows Damen had noticed from the street occupied the entire east side of the loft. Absently, he said, “Mornings must be glorious here.” 

There was a perfectly made-up bed against the northern wall, its crisp, white sheets tucked into immaculate hospital corners and a navy blue duvet folded up at the foot. It was twin-sized, a testament to Laurent’s supposed celibacy. The rest of said wall was occupied by several identical bookshelves. Aside from the books, there were no personal possessions anywhere in the loft; no bric-a-brac on the kitchen counter, no art on the red brick walls, and hardly any furniture. The kitchen was small, with a granite counter island and two stools. In the middle, there was a vase with fresh peonies, so new that someone would have had to set it out that day. 

“Huh,” Jord said, eyeing the flowers just as Damen was. 

“Maybe he does have a sweetheart after all,” Damen said in a teasing tone. 

“Or an excellent florist,” came Laurent’s voice from the door. He was followed into the loft by an elderly man who had clearly dressed in a hurry--his shirt had been buttoned wrong and was only half-tucked in. 

“You weren’t lying when you said he was massive,” the man said. “I’m Laurent’s physician, Paschal.”

“I suppose it won’t do to have you wearing slacks and a destroyed dress shirt for the foreseeable future, will it?” Laurent said, opening the door of a closet and pulling out a few items from the very back. He took a breath, looking almost unsteady, and then tossed the clothes at Damen. Jord, next to Damen, had gone extremely still. 

After a very uncomfortable silence from both the doctor and Jord, which Damen did not understand in the least, Laurent said irritably, “For God’s sake, he isn’t going to come around asking for his clothing, is he?” 

Laurent, with clothes of his own in his arms, stomped into what Damen could only assume was the bathroom. He heard the tap running and Jord, very quietly, said, “Those were his brother’s clothes.” 

Damen looked at what he was given--a threadbare T-shirt advertising some band he had never heard of, too small for him but certainly far too large for Laurent, and a pair of sweatpants that he supposed he could squeeze into. He unbuttoned his own shirt, ruined anyway, and tossed it in the trash before sitting obediently on one of the stools as Paschal dug through his physician’s bag. 

“Thank you for doing this. We must have disturbed your sleep. I owe you a great deal,” Damen said, watching Paschal’s knobby hands clean the injury.

“Nonsense,” the old man said distractedly, absorbed in his work. “Laurent gets as many favors as he wants. The boy is such a lamb.”

Damen swallowed a scoff. Last he checked, lambs did not rob palaces of priceless artifacts nor did they commit arson. If he had to compare Laurent to any animal, it might be something cold-blooded and reptilian. But then, people were surprising. He certainly didn’t think Kastor was capable of murder, but he’d seen the assassin and the poison with his own two eyes.

“What happened to his brother?” Damen asked tentatively.

“He was killed,” Paschal said after a short pause, as though he had been debating whether it was wise to answer or not, and suture Damen’s wound.

** iv. **

Auguste had died on a Wednesday in the middle of the afternoon. It had been a beautiful day in mid-spring with everything in full bloom. They’d had cereal for breakfast--Auguste had poured Laurent’s bowl for him, and Laurent had protested that he could do it himself. Since their father had died on a job a few months previously, Laurent had noticed the Auguste had been babying him in a way that had never happened before, and in fact the only reason Laurent did not outright insist that he was thirteen and perfectly capable of pouring his own damn cereal was that he suspected babying him helped Auguste in some intangible way. 

Laurent had school in a building towards the city center which had miraculously managed to sustain no damage from the ongoing conflict and Auguste walked him there as he always did. They’d had an argument about whether or not Laurent needed to wear a jacket on the walk over. Laurent insisted that it was too warm, and Auguste, in that newly-babying way, had insisted right back that it was better safe than sorry. Laurent was seething. He didn’t _want_ to lug the thing around all day, or wear it and wind up sweating under his clothes, or shove it in his bag, which would make the bag look weirdly-shaped. To Laurent at the time, all these options seemed worse than death, and for years after he would loathe himself for having such a clear-cut marker of his childhood naivety. On Wednesday, he didn’t want the indignity of having a weirdly-shaped bag. On Thursday, he couldn’t fathom having such a trivial concern.

Even more infuriating than having to be subjected to walking around all day either with a weirdly-shaped bag, or a jacket in his arms, or being sweaty, Auguste had been inordinately amused by the entire debate and treated Laurent taking the jacket as a foregone conclusion. 

“I can see how having a strangely-shaped bag would be terrible,” Auguste had said, nodding solemnly. 

“You’re making fun of me!” Laurent cried. 

“I am not,” Auguste said. “I take this very seriously.” But the uptick in the corner of his mouth and the twinkle in his eyes said otherwise.

And so Laurent, petulant, stomped all the way to school next to Auguste, wearing the stupid jacket that he’d have to carry around all day or sweat under or stuff into his bag like some kind of asshole. 

“I have a meeting with the Council today so I may be a few minutes late picking you up,” Auguste said, ruffling Laurent’s hair. 

Laurent, wanting to punish Auguste for the entire jacket debacle, fixed his hair pointedly and grumpily muttered, “I’m thirteen, I can walk myself home.” 

Auguste grinned. “I bet. Wait for me, though, alright?” 

Laurent, relenting a little, said, “Alright,” and walked into the school. 

Laurent had been right; he had not needed the jacket. His fury had faded to annoyance by noon and was almost forgotten by the time school let out. Faithfully, he sat on the steps of the school waiting for Auguste. After twenty minutes he pulled out his phone--they weren’t allowed at school, and though school was technically over, a teacher could still confiscate it if said teacher was feeling mean enough--and called his brother. 

It went straight to voicemail. 

He tried again, and again, and again. By this time, he was the last child sitting outside. Anxiously, he decided to walk home himself. Auguste and Laurent had worked out this plan since the civil war had begun: if things got bad, If they got separated after an explosion or during some Akeilon nonsense, they would go straight home and sit tight. So Laurent went home, calling Auguste twice more on the way and still getting nothing. 

Their house was empty. He made a cheese sandwich for himself, cutting it diagonally and setting half of it aside for Auguste. He chewed nervously and without tasting, looking out of one of the front windows for his brother. When he finished eating, he called his uncle and told him of the situation. 

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Laurent said, trying to ignore the cold, sick dread that crept through his belly. “What time did Auguste leave your meeting?” 

“He left about an hour before you got out of school. My darling, I will use all my contacts in the city and we will find him,” said his uncle. 

This was before Laurent had any reason to mistrust him. After, when Laurent was able to really analyze things, he would remember a distinct ring of anticipation in his uncle’s voice.

** v. **

Now would have been an appropriate time to cry, if Laurent were still able to do such a thing. But he had not cried in years, so instead he turned the shower temperature up too high, so hot that it hurt and his usually-white skin turned a worryingly bright shade of pink, and rested his forehead against the tile. 

He had kept all of Auguste’s favorite clothes, which was embarrassing in its sentimentality and tenderness, and he had hoped that Jord and Paschal would be polite enough to pretend not to notice when he handed the clothing off to the prince. He had hoped in vain. 

But it could have been worse. Worse than knowing that he had saved them for all these years, they could have known that he sometimes wistfully pulled out one of Auguste’s old flannels-- the one with a splash of purple Rit dye on the wrist from when he and Laurent had tie-dyed their bedsheets one sunny summer afternoon--and smelled it, which was ludicrous, because it had been over seven years since Auguste died and there was no way it still smelled like him. Crazier still, he sometimes thought he _could_ smell something, or the ghost of something, as though Auguste existed somewhere in the cotton fibers and Laurent just needed to catch it at the right time. 

They could know that (and this is something he did not often admit to himself, so buried was it that he sometimes thought he made it up) after his uncle had pushed things to a breaking point and it was sink or swim and he, to his great shame, swam, he had gone to his suitcase in the dead of night and, shivering, unpacked that very threadbare T-shirt he had handed the prince, pulled it over his head, and hugged it close to himself as he sobbed. His uncle, sexually sated and without a care in the world, snored loudly from down the hall. 

He took a deep breath and stepped out of the shower. He dressed slowly and mechanically and by the time he pulled his turtleneck over his head, he was fine. Everything was fine. 

But it wasn’t fine, because he felt real rage when he came back out and saw Damianos stretching out that thin shirt that had hung all the way to his knees when he was thirteen. He had the mad urge to lift the vase of peonies over his head and smash it on the floor, or to slap the prince across the face for sitting there, calm as you please, getting stitched up by Paschal in Auguste’s favorite shirt. “You have no idea,” he would say, “what that shirt and I have gone through. You have no fucking idea.” 

And then, he wondered if he had any idea himself. Before that shirt came into his possession, it had been Auguste’s. Auguste, who had probably kissed girls in that shirt, who slept in it sometimes, who would wrestle friends and play the guitar and drink beers and watch movies in it, who maybe fell in love and got drunk and got hurt wrapped in that thin layer of cotton. Auguste had lived an entire life with that shirt outside of Laurent. 

Realizing that his thoughts were bordering on the dangerous, he reeled himself in. He did not slap Damianos. He did not smash the vase of peonies. He met no one’s eyes as he retrieved his copy of _The Things They Carried_ and opened it up to where he left off.

** vi. **

The sun was just beginning to rise when Paschal finished. He and Jord had shown themselves out and Laurent wearily tucked a pillow under his arm. 

“You may use my bed. I am going elsewhere,” he said, walking towards the door.

“Where?” Damen yawned, carding his fingers through his hair and collapsing ungracefully on the too-small bed. He would have been happy to sleep on the floor, in all honesty. God knows he’d slept on worse in his military days. But he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

“Just elsewhere,” Laurent said icily, exiting the front door of his loft. 

What a strange man--difficult to pin down. He was prickly, downright mean, even, and yet he had the unquestioned loyalty of Jord and the doctor and Lazar. He was an arsonist and a thief who casually quoted Homer and Walt Whitman and played hide-and-seek with miserable children. He stole diamonds for a living but seemed to own nothing superfluous. But he had been awake far too long to ruminate on it too hard and he fell into a dead sleep in a matter of minutes. 

When he awoke, Laurent was sitting on one of the stools, gracefully holding that tattered copy of _The Things They Carried_ in one hand and sipping coffee. He had earbuds in and was mostly faced away, a beam of sunlight striking him in such a way that Damen could just make out the profile of his long, curved eyelashes and the corner of his mouth. 

“There’s coffee left in the French press if you want some,” Laurent said, pausing his music. Damen was at once impressed and unnerved that Laurent could sense that he’d woken up without turning around. 

“Thanks,” Damen said, his voice rough with sleep as he stood and discreetly tucked his morning wood into his waistband, stretching out. He lumbered slowly through the kitchen, opening one cabinet then another to locate the mugs. 

There was a large plate of berries and sliced fruit on the counter that Laurent was lazily picking from, so Damen sat next to him and popped a blackberry into his mouth. It was then that he noticed the color in Laurent’s cheeks and the dewy perspiration spread across his face. Instead of commenting on it, he glanced down at the book. 

“I read that in college,” he said, trying to strike up some semblance of a normal conversation. Laurent thus far had been mostly hostile, but it didn’t have to be that way. If they were stuck together, they could at least be civil. “My favorite chapter was the one about how to tell a true war story. The thing with the baby water buffalo,” Damen shook his head.

Laurent looked at him with so much contempt that Damen leaned an inch away. “The baby water buffalo getting shot represents the death of one’s innocence,” he said poisonously, giving a mirthless, quick little laugh that sent a shiver up Damen’s spine. Before he could say more, and no doubt he was about to say something devastating, his phone began to buzz. 

If Damen had thought that he had just witnessed Laurent at his most hostile, he was dead wrong. Laurent’s jaw clenched. His entire body looked taut, like a rubber band ready to snap as he accepted the call and placed the phone to his ear. 

From the other end, Damen heard a man’s voice say, “Am I supposed to find out that my right-hand man died on a job from that fucking rube you have as a getaway driver?” 

“You assigned him as the driver, Uncle,” Laurent said. His words came out of his mouth with slight distaste, like how one might spit out fruit after biting into it and finding it mealy. “I expect this call is to request my presence for a formal report?” 

“You expect right,” the man snapped. “Be here in two hours. Jord and Lazar have already given their testimonies.” Then, there was a beep. He’d hung up without saying goodbye.

** vii. **

Laurent had slept on the roof because he did not like the idea of being unconscious in the same room as a stranger who could, no doubt, physically overpower him. The rooftop, with its solid concrete door that required a key, eased all anxieties Laurent had about his own safety. It had been comfortable enough, except that it was broad daylight and he’d accidentally shifted out of the shade in his sleep, sunburning a weird fraction of his stomach where his shirt had ridden up. And it had sunburned badly. When he awoke, he was dizzy and thirsty and too-hot with a bright red stripe across his belly. 

Worse, the Akeilon look _nice_ waking up and plodding over to the kitchen. Pouring himself coffee like he hadn’t completely fucked Vere. Sitting next to him, reaching over to grab some fruit. Discussing literature. It was a cruel peek at normalcy and domesticity that Laurent would never get. He was reminded of that thought he’d had in Paris six months before: get a boyfriend, get a little dog, forget about the jewels and the responsibility he has for Jord and Paschal and Nicaise and Lazar. Forget about stopping his uncle, who every day was getting the syndicate into more and more nefarious things and adding to the net evil of the world.

The prince, in some doomed attempt at pleasantries, had revealed that he and Laurent shared the same favorite chapter of _The Things They Carried_ , which Laurent found irksome. They had been opposing factions years before, and the echo of the damage that Akeilos had dealt during its occupation was still visible in Arles today. Laurent felt a strange, almost juvenile ownership over the book. _How dare you find merit in something that I love?_ he had thought. What did the Akeilon know of slaughtering your own innocence?

Laurent used to have nightmares about that chapter when he was younger. He would dream that he was Rat Kiley, shooting the baby water buffalo, but he was also the baby water buffalo. He could see the situation unfolding from both perspectives, shooting and getting shot, and he would wake up in his uncle’s bed in a cold sweat. 

He had changed into a suit, the waistline of the trousers rubbing irritably on his burnt skin, and boarded the train bound for Old Arles. He hadn’t brought a book, proof of his foul mood, and instead stared sullenly at the passing city. 

His mood had not improved by the time he arrived at his stop, but he took measures to look more placid than he felt; he dropped Visine into his bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes and forced the stress out of his expression. By the time he strode in front of the Council, he looked untroubled. Sanguine, even.

** viii. **

“And Jord texted you that Govart wandered away from the job sometime before the guests arrived in the late afternoon,” Regent said. 

Laurent resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They had gone over the sequence of events in minute detail, and it was clear that his uncle was trying to trip him up. “I was maintaining my cover as a waiter during this time, so I cannot verify exactly when Jord and Govart were separated. I do know that when we arrived at the meeting point, Govart and Prince Damianos were engaged in hand-to-hand combat nearby. Before we were able to provide backup for Govart, the two slipped off the cliff at the meeting point and plummeted into the sea.” 

This had been the lie they’d all rehearsed all the way back to Arles. He had made sure Lazar, especially, knew it backwards and forwards. 

“We need to get proof that Regent was conspiring with Kastor before we out him to the Council,” Laurent had explained. 

“And that will simultaneously provide me with the proof I need to prosecute my brother,” Damen supplied. This wasn’t true, per se, because if they brought Kastor to trial, the Akeilons would inevitably have to use evidence that would compromise the syndicate. 

But they could cross that bridge when they came to it. For now, it was best that the prince believed they had goals in common. So Laurent had said, “Precisely,” as they continued to practice what the Council might ask them. 

“And you were only able to get the items that you did--the paintings and the crown jewels-- rather than everything on our list because you had to make haste once it became apparent that the prince had died?” Herode asked. 

“Yes,” Laurent said. 

“This all seems perfectly reasonable. I don’t see why we must interrogate the boy so,” Herode said to Regent. 

“A valuable member of our syndicate lost his life,” Regent answered. “This is a matter of due diligence.” 

“We have been here discussing this all day,” Herode replied. “Respectfully, I believe we have the information we need.” 

Laurent’s uncle, perhaps seeing that this was a losing battle, relented. Nodding, he said, “You are dismissed, Laurent. We will inform you of our decision.” 

Laurent did not breathe easy until he was on the train again, heading to his own neighborhood. Though he had known it logically before, that he had entered into a deathmatch with his uncle had not felt real until he stood there before the Council and lied. This was kill or be killed. Every move counted. He would make every move count.


	5. Into the Belly of the Beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a lil break for the holidays but I plan on resuming my regular updating schedule now! Thank you all for your patience. Comments make my day.

**"Even if you don’t believe in God, you have to believe in narrative. Things happen, one after another, world without end...Eventually, someone is going to break your heart. Eventually, something you love is going to be taken away," --Richard Siken**

** i. **

Nicaise had lived with Regent for a year and a half when he got slapped so hard that all he could do was stand there. He couldn’t look back at Regent, he couldn’t even quite register the sting on his cheek. His mouth hung open.

He was impaired, sure. Regent had given him half a teacup of middle-of-the-shelf vodka and a popper, the latter of which he’d spilled on the carpet. That was why he’d gotten hit. 

“I’m never going to get this shit out of my carpet,” Regent had said. 

Nicaise, neck still turned, studied the baseboards. There was a spot where he could see the painter’s tape had stuck and never been peeled off. When he rolled his neck back to face Regent, it felt like he had been hit ages ago. 

Regent looked almost worried, like he thought he’d done brain damage (which, now that Nicaise thought about it, he probably had with the liquor, but not with the slap). He regarded Nicaise with something approaching concern and had him sent back to bed. The help woke up a different boy to take Nicaise’s place. 

The next morning, Nicaise woke early and, foggy-brained and not nearly as covert as he’d like to pretend, stole the still-sleeping Regent’s keyring and walked to the nearest hardware store to copy each key.

He started paying close attention to Regent’s electronics. He kept a diary of Regent’s comings and goings and his meetings. His relationship with Regent was transactional, but Regent did not know what transaction was truly taking place. Nicaise demanded a very high price for his childhood and he was going to take payment by force when the time came.

** ii. **

On the third morning Damen spent in Arles, he awoke to Laurent indolently scrolling on a MacBook as he sipped his morning coffee.

“Have you had that the whole time?” Damen asked. He had gone through legitimate withdrawals from the internet. He’d left his phone at the palace the night he’d fled, and he’d scoured the loft for technology. All Laurent had in his possession, technology-wise, was an ancient iPhone which he kept on his person at all times. 

“I bought it today to keep tabs on the situation in Akeilos. Did you know that the ‘Personal Life’ section on your Wikipedia page has seven separate items?” 

“Does it say I’m dead?” Damen asked with some interest, striding across the loft to look over Laurent’s shoulder. The browser was purple with--of all things--an onion logo, which Laurent only had opened in the lower left corner of the screen. He had a search engine up that Damen had never heard of, clicking through news articles with titles like, **SIGNS OF STRUGGLE IN IOS PALACE** , and the more clickbait-y **DID THE PRINCE PREDICT HIS OWN DISAPPEARANCE? TEN TWEETS FROM THE LAST DECADE WE’VE ANALYZED**. 

“Missing,” Laurent said, still scrolling. “There’s a €25,000 reward for information about your disappearance. That’s rather low, don’t you think? Your consort was wearing a gown that probably cost just as much when she was getting serviced by your brother.” 

“I’ll pay you €25,000 to never mention that incident again,” Damen said irritably, making his way to the French Press.

** iii. **

Regent had a new favorite, a young, guileless drip of a boy called Guillaume or Gaston or Gilen--Nicaise couldn’t exactly remember. From the way the boy carried himself, it was clear that the proverbial other shoe had yet to drop, but Regent had planned a long weekend in Chastillon with the boy, so that was sure to change.

Nicaise saw the writing on the wall. He’d stopped receiving an allowance. His things were being boxed up by the help. He’d unlocked his phone a few days previously to find that his service had been shut off. The only thing Regent hadn’t done was outright tell him to leave, and he knew that was coming soon. 

So he made the trip to that fuck-ugly factory that Laurent had “repurposed” or “refurbished” or whatever, weathering the cheek pinches from old ladies on the train, with the intent to do as much damage to Regent as he possibly could before he was out on his ass. Regent could take his childhood. He could cut off his phone, box up the few things he owned, move on to other boys. But Nicaise was going to go down swinging. 

“Laurent!” Nicaise said, bursting into the apartment. He did not see Laurent. Instead, he saw a giant lounging on Laurent’s bed, a book in his humongous hands. 

“Well, hello,” the enormous man said pleasantly. “And who might you be?” 

If Nicaise knew one thing, it was that Laurent was not social. He did not date. He certainly did not let strange men lay around his loft in the middle of the day. His first thought was that this was Govart’s replacement, coming to stop Nicaise in his tracks. How could he have thought he could betray Regent, who was always two steps ahead of everyone? And where was Laurent? Dead, probably, just like he was about to be. 

Terrified and trying not to show it, Nicaise said, “Who the _fuck_ are you?” 

“I--” 

Nicaise did not wait to hear the man’s answer. He lunged toward the knife block, ripping a cleaver from its slot. As fast as he could, he threw the cleaver at the man, missing by a great deal. The next knife he threw ended up closer but not by much. 

“Hey--” the man tried again, standing up. 

“Don’t come any fucking closer,” Nicaise said with as much menace as he could manage, throwing another knife. This one hit one of the bookcases a good two meters away from the man and stuck there. 

“I think you need glasses,” the man said, more baffled than threatened. “Your depth perception seems off.” 

There was a quick laugh from the doorway. Recognizing this laugh to be Laurent’s, Nicaise turned around, immense relief flooding through him. 

“I hope those weren’t the Damasukasu knives. I’m rather fond of them,” Laurent said, crossing the room to inspect the damage. 

“There is a _behemoth_ in your home,” Nicaise said, not without some distress. 

“Yes,” Laurent said, picking up one of the knives and looking it over. “I’m as happy about it as you are, I assure you.” 

“I didn’t realize you had a miniature,” the behemoth said, regarding Nicaise with a warm, almost condescending fondness that Nicaise did not care for one bit. 

Contemptuously, Nicaise folded his arms and looked away from the giant. “I’m getting kicked out,” he said to Laurent. 

“Congratulations,” Laurent said, having gathered all three knives in his hands. “The renovations are just about done. I can put you up somewhere until then.” 

Nicaise dug through his backpack (Fjällräven, lavender. Regent had realized that boys liked them and made a point to get new ones for his favorites) and pulled out a paper bag, which he dropped theatrically on the counter. 

“What’s this?” Laurent asked.

** iv. **

In Laurent’s line of work, there were very few acts of altruism, and, faced with a perfectly gift-wrapped weapon against his uncle, Laurent was suspicious.

It wasn’t that he distrusted Nicaise. It was that he had more faith in Nicaise’s survival instinct than his sense of right and wrong, and if Regent had fabricated all of this as a way to get Laurent caught or killed, it would serve Laurent right for falling into such a trap. Hadn’t he developed his own Stockholm Syndrome towards his uncle? 

He had felt _rejected_ when his uncle had stopped wanting him. What a thing to feel! He detested every touch yet he had been jealous of the younger boys who got more attention. The entire thing was vile. The memory of it sharpened his edges. 

“How do I know my uncle did not send you?” Laurent asked coldly, circling him as he spoke. “A key to his office and a guarantee that he’ll be gone for a long weekend? Almost too good to be true.” 

Nicaise’s cherubic face looked scared for a split second before it hardened. “Is it too good? You should see the boy he’s taking to Chastillon.” 

Laurent paused his circling, and Nicaise could see that he had gained a point. He pressed on: “A doe-eyed, sweet boy. It won’t be the last if you don’t--” 

“Alright,” Laurent said sharply. “What do you get out of this?”

“When you kill him,” the boy said, “I want to watch.” 

“Agreed,” Laurent replied, deciding that the hatred and determination in Nicaise’s eyes were genuine, and stuck his hand out to shake on the deal.

** v. **

“I still don’t understand how Nicaise didn’t recognize me,” Damen said, pulling on a black turtleneck that Laurent had bought him specifically for this night, which struck Damen as rather theatrical. They were planning on walking into an unoccupied house and there was no reason to dress like a pair of fucking ninjas. But Laurent, Damen was coming to realize, had a bit of a flair for the dramatic.

He tugged at the collar, uncomfortably snug against his muscular neck. He hated turtlenecks. In fact, he hated crew necks. He felt suffocated by most clothes, which was why he took every opportunity to wear traditional Akeilon garb rather than tuxedos to formal events if he could get away with it.

Laurent made a dismissive noise as he sipped a bottle of water, leaning carelessly against the wall, casually reading some paperback that Damen had not caught the name of. “Would you recognize the Crown Princess of Sweden?”

Damen would recognize the Crown Princess of Sweden because he was friends with her little brother. That wasn’t the point Laurent was trying to make, though, and he didn’t feel like being needlessly difficult at this juncture. 

“Teenagers like, you know, SoundCloud rappers and Instagram influencers. They don’t care about foreign political leaders,” Laurent added. It had been strange, seeing a completely furious child with the face of an angel declare that he wanted to watch a man die. Stranger still that Laurent had humored this request, absolutely no questions asked, which Damen considered an unorthodox way to treat a child. 

And it was strange, now, how much it pleased Damen to have a normal conversation with Laurent, who usually went for the throat immediately. Deciding to push his luck, he asked, “What were you like when you were that age?” 

And just like that, the conversation was over. Something very dark passed over Laurent’s face. “Softer,” he said in a voice that Damen could only describe as dangerous.

** vi. **

When he was a boy, Laurent had had an orange kitten named Edgar whom he used to dress in sweaters in the wintertime. Edgar hated this but sat patiently until Laurent was finished before biting at the sweater, rolling until he had managed to shrug the thing off. There was a look of resigned dismay in Edgar’s face as little Laurent outfitted him in a new sweater. _This is my lot in life, to be put in a godforsaken sheath of wool by a boy I adore, day after day, paid only in treats and cuddles and love,_ Edgar’s eyes said.

It was an alarmingly similar expression to the one Prince Damianos wore, visibly uncomfortable with so much skin covered, as he and Laurent left the loft after sunset. He looked so pathetic that Laurent found it rather funny--his lips twitched, threatening to smile on their own accord every time Damen would glace his way. He almost regretted insisting that Damen wear it, but it was like the wig he had had Orlant wear, or the too-tight uniform he had snagged for Govart: wholly unnecessary and maybe a little mean. But If he didn’t get to have a little fun, what was the point? And who would have thought that the mighty prince could be defeated by a cashmere blend? 

“It’s a million degrees,” Prince Damianos complained as they walked through the dimly-lit streets of Laurent’s empty neighborhood. They couldn’t take the train; Nicaise did not recognize the prince, but that did not mean that no one would. It was safer to walk to his uncle’s house via back alleys and emptier neighborhoods, despite the trek being markedly longer.

“I run cooler than most,” Laurent said, not giving even an ounce of sympathy. 

“So your personality isn’t the only thing reptilian about you,” the prince snapped, clearly irritable from the excessive heat. 

It was an Akeilon way to think about things--taking everything at face value like that with absolutely no regard for nuance. It was almost charming in its simplicity. 

Laurent decided to strike back with a jab of his own, though he knew riling up one’s partner on a job--he considered this reconnaissance mission against his uncle to be like a job--was ill-advised. “A few years ago, I read a study about how people stop developing once they become significantly wealthy. For example, Mark Zuckerberg became rich at the age of twenty-three, and therefore he shall remain, mentally and emotionally, twenty-three all his life. I wonder what that means for someone such as yourself, who was born wealthy? Are you just an infant at heart? That would explain your rather petulant attitude.” 

Indignantly, the prince scoffed. “You steal jewels and art for a living and you’re lecturing me about wealth?” 

“Are you under the impression that I steal shiny things to inflate my net worth? Did you see a Scrooge McDuckian vault filled with gold coins in my loft? I don’t keep anything. It gets sold and everyone gets a cut.” 

“So my late mother’s emeralds?” the prince asked, rife with hatred. “You just sold them like they meant nothing?” 

“ _I_ didn’t,” Laurent said casually. “But, yes, I imagine they’re halfway around the world by now.” 

“And that doesn’t bother you? That you sold my dead mother’s jewels?” The question was clearly phrased in a way to make Laurent out to be the bad guy. Well, Laurent had never occupied another country for the sake of his own vanity, and so Laurent, by default, would always be the better person in any conversation he had with the prince. 

“I have far greater concerns than what happens to a few rocks, believe me,” Laurent answered flippantly. 

“You kept your brother’s things. Why am I not allowed such a courtesy?” the prince said, his tone accusative. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Laurent could tell he regretted it. 

Laurent had stopped walking, thankful that it was too dark out for the prince to see the abject horror that had momentarily taken over his face. Laurent went over the list of things he had not been allowed to keep after his brother’s death: of the house he grew up in and everything in it (sold by his uncle to “pay for the poor, sweet boy’s education,” the profits of which Laurent had never seen a damn penny of), of Edgar, who Govart had driven to the outskirts of the city and abandoned there while Laurent was at school because Regent did not want to take care of “the mangey thing.” He thought of his virginity, of his happiness, of the pieces of him which were beaten and broken until he emerged hard and angry and ready to fight. So he’d saved a few scraps of fabric. That wasn’t comparable to priceless gemstones in the least. 

The prince was in the middle of a rambling apology when Laurent came back to himself: “--under a lot of stress here, and I realize that you’re helping me out--” 

“Shut up,” Laurent bit. “You know nothing--less than nothing--about me. We shall continue this walk in silence.” 

If the prince rolled his eyes, Laurent did not see it in the dark, and they walked side by side in a tense, thick silence.

** vi. **

Laurent’s uncle--Regent he was called--lived in a grand mansion in the Veretian Baroque style. The contrast between Regent and Laurent was stark in this regard: one lived minimalistically in a seemingly self-imposed isolation while the other lived lavishly, in this gilded house, with a full staff (all off for the weekend, Nicaise had assured them).

Nicaise met them at the door. “You look livid,” he said, an impish grin breaking across his face.

“Yes, well,” Laurent said, stepping past the petite boy, “I have allied myself with a behemoth. That would get on anyone’s nerves.” 

Nicaise let the smile fall as his cold glare (eerily similar to Laurent’s) took in Damen. He said, “You look positively ridiculous in that sweater.” 

Laurent let out a snicker and Damen realized--for the first time--that the itchy, horrible thing he was wearing in no way matched Laurent’s lightweight, long-sleeved shirt. His mouth hung open, so shocked was he by the deceit. He pulled the sweater over his head. He had a white tank top underneath which did little for his modesty, and he watched as Nicaise and Laurent’s eyes both cut to the side and they blushed. Veretians and their puritanical sensibility! He nearly rolled his eyes. 

“Is his office still in the same place?” Laurent asked after a moment. 

This seemed to snap Nicaise out of his embarrassment, and he perked up and said, “Yes! Right this way.” 

Laurent and Nicaise started down a hall off the foyer and Laurent, bronze key in hand, took a deep breath as he unlocked a heavy door. 

“Into the belly of the beast,” Laurent said as he swung the door open.


	6. Polaroid

** i. **

Was it strange that Laurent had been expecting the place to look more like an evil lair? He’d envisioned a glass floor which doubled as a piranha tank, or a cavernous room with stalactites dripping water from the ceiling, or a hedonistic throne from which his uncle plotted. But this was just a regular office, with a regular desk and a regular filing cabinet and a regular desk chair. How disappointing that great evil always looks so benign. But he supposed that was one immutable truth of the world: evil happened in gorgeous villas in Wannsee and in gleaming, cocaine-bright offices on Wall Street. Evil was implemented by charming actors-turned-leaders and by the daughters of Methodist tobacconists. Evil, in the real world, did not look like Sauron or Darth Vader or Freddy Krueger. It looked like this: a stupid, regular fucking desk and a stupid, regular fucking filing cabinet and a stupid, regular fucking desk chair.

Laurent was the first to step in. He was keenly aware of Nicaise, two steps behind him and nervous but trying not to look like it, and so he put on a cool face and strolled insouciantly over to the filing cabinet. He tried one of the smaller keys on the ring to open it, and then another when the first didn’t work. 

Nicaise had moved to the desk and was rifling around in the drawers while the behemoth poked through a closet that was stuffed to the brim with storage and filing boxes. 

“Remember, we can’t take anything. His printer over there can make copies, and we can take pictures, but he can’t know anyone was in here,” Laurent said, finally opening the first drawer in the filing cabinet and thumbing through documents.

“Do criminals even keep records?” the behemoth asked at the exact same time Nicaise said, “I thought Regent and Govart were friends.” 

This piqued Laurent’s interest. “What do you mean?” he asked, making his way to the desk. 

“There’s, like, a manila envelope with creepshots of him and shit,” Nicaise said, offering the envelope to Laurent. 

Laurent looked through it. “Nicaise, these aren’t creepshots, it’s surveillance,” he said. And then: “Why was my uncle surveilling Govart?”

It occurred to Laurent, not for the first time, that there was something more to Govart than an undisciplined wall of fat and muscle. Someone as idiotic and brash as Govart didn’t get this far in life without a bargaining chip, that was for sure. 

“I’m finding stocks in Akeilon companies here, which is weird for several reasons, but not necessarily damning,” Laurent muttered, examining an alarming investment portfolio. He pulled out his phone and was snapping a few pictures when, all of a sudden, there was a crash from the direction of the behemoth. 

The prince had knocked over a black storage box--the sort you keep Polaroids in--and scores of photographs littered the carpet. Laurent only needed a passing glance to see what the pictures were of.

“Look away, Nicaise,” Laurent said, but perhaps it would have been better advice for the prince, who looked visibly ill, his mouth hanging open. 

“All those boys,” the prince said, the revulsion plain in his voice. 

It struck Laurent as deeply naive that the prince hadn’t put it together by now. He resisted the urge to laugh cruelly-- _What did you think Nicaise wanted him dead for?_ , he almost said. Before he could, he caught a flash of cornsilk from one of the pictures. 

“Look away, Damen,” Laurent ground out, so deadly serious that it shocked even himself. His stomach was in his feet. His heart was in his throat. Nothing had prepared him for this. 

The prince did as he was told, burying his face in his hands, perhaps because Laurent had never used his name before. Perhaps because the scene in front of them was so repulsive. Perhaps because he had heard the rabid, horrible edge in Laurent’s voice. 

Laurent moved quickly to where the photographs were spilled. He snatched two of himself up, fighting to keep the bile down, and stuffed them in his pocket. He began to pick up the mess, wondering if the vile things had been in any sort of order, and shoved them back into their box. He found a third image of himself and pocketed it as well. 

“It’s picked up,” Laurent said coldly, placing the box back on the shelf and cutting his eyes to the side. 

The prince removed his head from his hands and fixed Laurent with a look of pure hatred. “That’s all you have to say?” 

Laurent pressed his lips into a thin line. There was no question in his mind that the prince had not seen Laurent in the photographs. There was no question in his mind that the prince thought Laurent, too, was just learning about his uncle’s hobbies and reacting far, far too calmly. 

“I think we should break into Govart’s place. He was less careful than my uncle, and my uncle clearly had a reason to surveil him. I’m certain we’ll find more information there,” Laurent said, choosing not to be baited by the prince. 

“You have ice in your veins,” the prince said, still looking a bit ashen. But most of his disgust had turned to anger and it was all aimed at Laurent. 

Very quickly, Laurent glanced at Nicaise, who was staring at some fixed point on the desk. “Let’s go,” Nicaise said quietly. 

The prince huffed self-righteously and stomped out of the office. 

“Was I in any of those?” Nicaise asked, his voice coming out more raw than Laurent had ever heard it. 

Laurent, suddenly more sad than disgusted, said, “No, the box was dated from 2014.” 

Nicaise nodded. Laurent could tell that he didn’t feel any better.

** ii. **

Laurent checked Nicaise into a hotel and put his credit card on file so Nicaise could order food and movies if he wanted. The prince waited in the alleyway beside the hotel, staying in the shadows for fear of being recognized.

That was where Laurent found him after he’d made sure Nicaise was safe. “Govart lived near the red-light district. I have his address in my phone from a couple of jobs ago,” he said, leading the prince deeper into Arles. 

By the time they had approached their destination, Laurent had let go of most of the nausea he’d had back in his uncle’s office. Maybe he shouldn’t have stolen those photographs. He’d said it himself: they couldn’t let his uncle know they were there. But what sort of person would miss three photographs out of hundreds? He doubted his uncle even looked at them. They were probably just some sort of sick trophies. Why look at pictures when you’ve got the real deal, anyway? 

Still, the fact that all three photographs were in his back pocket made him sick. Almost obsessively, he ran his thumb over the closest Polaroid’s edge, making certain that they hadn’t somehow fallen out. The moment he got to his loft, he resolved to burn the pictures. He would burn down his uncle’s entire house when he got the opportunity. 

Govart’s apartment could only be accessed from a fire escape in an alley. Laurent had assumed this was for nefarious reasons. After all, who needs a nosey neighbor asking questions if you come home splattered in blood, or with some too-drunk young thing who obviously can’t consent. Now, Govart’s discretion--what very little there was of it--worked in the pair’s favor. 

“It’s locked, unsurprisingly,” Laurent said as he attempted to slide open the window. He untucked his shirt, pulling the knife he always had strapped to him on jobs off of his torso. He jammed it under the sill, attempting to jimmy the lock with the blade. Within seconds, he heard a satisfying _click_ , and turned to look at the prince with a wide smile on his face. 

“That was fast,” the prince observed. 

Laurent’s smile grew impossibly wider. “It’s almost like I should rob people for a living,” he said, pulling the window open. Though he wasn’t looking at the prince, he imagined annoyance flicking across his expressive face. He knew the prince did not approve of his job. They stepped through the window, taking stock of their surroundings. 

Govart’s apartment was unappealing. There were moldy dishes in the sink and evidence that mice had begun to take up residence in the kitchen in Govart’s absence. The place smelled rank and Laurent primly pinched his nose, looking over at Damen, who seemed less fazed by the filth. 

“If your uncle’s office was the belly of this beast, perhaps this is the colon?” the prince offered, and Laurent couldn’t help it. He laughed.

** iii. **

It seemed that this Govart person had absolutely no system of organization for his things. His cellphone bills were in the same pile as his pay stubs--it struck Damen as sort of funny that a crime syndicate had a payroll--and he had receipts and mail scattered all over his small kitchen table.

“How do I look?” he heard Laurent say from the bedroom doorway. Damen glanced up and cracked a smile, briefly forgetting that he was angry. Laurent was wearing a giant, white Hooters T-shirt that hung to his mid-thigh. Laurent did a spin, and the back of the shirt advertised the restaurant’s location in Frankfurt, Germany.

“Classy,” Damen deadpanned. “I haven’t found anything yet. Except that Govart was not good about paying his bills on time.” 

“It’s not a total loss yet,” Laurent said, beginning to sift through the porno magazines on Govart’s bookshelf. “I did find this magnificent shirt.”

Damen bowed his head, still sifting through the miscellaneous papers. 

“Did I ever tell you that my father died on a job?” Laurent said. His voice was strange, and Damen looked up again. Laurent was holding what looked to be a letter in his hands. 

“No, you didn’t,” Damen said. Laurent had volunteered virtually no information about himself. He didn’t even know where Laurent slept at night. 

“No one’s died on a job before or since. It was weird, you know? We’re so careful. Jobs last thirty seconds, usually.” 

Damen got the distinct impression that something was very, very wrong. He stood and took two long strides to be next to Laurent. The letter in his hands was old--the ink was discolored in spots and the paper was yellowing. Laurent’s hands were shaking. 

Damen had never seen Laurent this shaken. Even back in Regent’s office, when those evil pictures had spilled everywhere, Laurent had squared his shoulders and barely reacted at all. Damen had thought he was made of stone up until this moment. 

Damen took the letter from Laurent. “I should have fucking guessed this,” Laurent said. 

The letter was, oddly, addressed to Paschal, the doctor Damen had met on his first night in Arles. The writer of the letter spoke about a change in the leadership of the crime syndicate. 

“It’s dated three days before my father died,” Laurent said. “He was on a job with Govart and Paschal’s brother. Govart was the only survivor--said they rigged up the explosives wrong or something. I’d just lost my mother to cancer.” 

“That’s awful,” Damen said sympathetically. 

“This letter proves that he was murdered,” Laurent said quietly. “That’s why my uncle was surveilling Govart. He was a loose string.”

** iv. **

The world was so goddamn ridiculous. This was the thought that ran through Laurent’s head as they walked back to his loft. Govart had hidden an incriminating letter in a copy of _Busty Asians_. Laurent had found it while wearing an extra-large Hooters shirt. In the company of a prince.

He was shaken by the information. So shaken, in fact, that he entirely forgot about the pictures in his pocket, and when he reached to pull off the absurd shirt he had over his clothes after they’d returned to his loft, the Polaroids caught and flew out of his back pocket. 

By some miracle, they landed face-down on the floor. 

Laurent had an out-of-body experience. The prince stared at the black squares. Some combination of disbelief and disgust was showing on his face. 

“You kept some?” the prince choked out, like he was fighting the urge to gag. He took a step towards the pictures. 

“I will absolutely never forgive you if you so much as touch those,” Laurent snarled. 

“Seeing as we aren’t friends, I couldn’t care less what you can forgive. You’re fucking sick.” 

Laurent hadn’t realized that the prince had not put two and two together. He wondered if all Akeilons were this incapable of critical thinking. The prince genuinely thought that Laurent had pocketed the pictures because he shared his uncle’s interests. It was almost laughable. 

And, Laurent decided, it was better than the truth. 

“That’s right. I’m sick. I’m a thief, and an arsonist, and a pervert.” 

Laurent moved to pick up the pictures, planning to march straight up to the roof of his building to set them on fire, but the prince was quicker than he looked and caught Laurent’s arm. 

“Don’t fucking touch them. You disgust me,” the prince said. 

Laurent broke the prince’s hold. He had, pragmatically, learned how to fight at a young age. It was a necessary skill in his line of work. He could hold his own against almost anyone, and the prince could wrestle those pictures out of his cold, dead hands. 

Laurent threw the first punch, landing it squarely on his jaw. It caught the prince by surprise, but soon the prince returned with a blow of his own. Soon, they were on the ground. Laurent managed a vicious jab in between the prince’s ribs which knocked the wind out of him, but Laurent realized that it was only a matter of time before the prince overpowered him. He was stronger than Laurent. 

As a contingency, Laurent began to inch their fight closer to photographs on the floor. It was possible that if he stunned the prince for a few seconds, he could grab the pictures and make a mad dash to the roof. 

They were within arm’s reach of the pictures now, and Laurent had wriggled out from under the prince. He pulled back his elbow and used it to hit the prince’s throat as hard as he could before he scrambled towards the pictures. He’d just gotten them in his hands when the prince tackled him, knocking his head hard against the floor. 

Dazed, Laurent stared at the ceiling for a moment. The prince was no longer fighting him. Why wasn’t the prince fighting him? 

Laurent glanced around. The prince was staring at the photographs, which had been turned face-up in the fight. 

“You could have told me,” the prince said. His voice was pained. 

Laurent was white-hot with rage. “Seeing as we aren’t friends,” he echoed, “I didn’t feel the need.” 

“I’m sorry,” the prince said solemnly.

Laurent detested the way the prince was looking at him, like he was some kicked puppy, some pitiable broken little thing. He detested that he’d lost the fight. And, he decided, he detested the prince. 

He should have left the photographs in that fucking box. His chest was heaving and he realized that he was on the brink of hyperventilating. When he moved to snatch up the photographs, the prince didn’t stop him. He no longer had the energy to make it onto the roof, and so he pulled his Zippo out of his pocket and lit the pictures right there on the floor. 

Film being highly flammable, the vile photographs were ash in seconds, leaving a black burn mark in his nice hardwood floor. 

Laurent fought the bizarre urge to laugh. He must be concussed, he realized, because none of this was even remotely funny. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared blankly at it. He couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do.

The prince was looking into his eyes. “We need to call Paschal,” he said seriously. 

Laurent held up his phone. It was getting increasingly difficult to keep his eyelids open. He barely heard the prince, on the phone, say, “Paschal? This is Damen. You met me a couple nights ago?”


	7. Fair Odds, Mister

** i. **

There was something strangely charming about Laurent at the moment. Damen knew it was wrong to think so, but maybe when Laurent hit his head, some of the friendliness got knocked loose.

Damen had not realized that the stern expression on Laurent’s face was something he put on. Laurent, unguarded, looked so much younger. He must be only twenty, if that. Damen had never thought to ask. 

He sat at the counter, blond hair falling into his face, looking a little lost and--Damen didn’t like to admit it--sort of sweet. For the first time, Damen thought about the implications of the three photographs he had seen. It was an uncomfortable reality, and one he didn’t want to live in. He wished to continue his uncomplicated dislike of Laurent, this man who had stolen from him and been viciously mean and conniving. But the more he saw of Laurent’s life, the less things seemed to be black-and-white. 

“Paschal said you aren’t allowed to read,” Damen said, and Laurent groaned. “He’s coming over tomorrow with some painkillers."

Laurent’s hand trembled slightly as he lifted a glass of water to his full lips. Feeling helpless and not used to it, and partially responsible for Laurent’s injury, Damen shifted uneasily where he was standing. 

“Are you hungry?” Damen offered. Laurent turned his head to look at Damen abruptly, which apparently made him dizzy because wobbled slightly as he looked searchingly at Damen. 

“Hungry?” Laurent repeated suspiciously, narrowing his eyes. The way he said it, as though Damen could _possibly_ have any ulterior motive for asking such a question, was almost funny. 

“Yes,” Damen chuckled, moving to circle the kitchen island. “I could make something.” 

“Make something?” Laurent said. Damen fought a smirk. He sounded like a parrot. 

Instead of continuing the conversation, which was going nowhere, Damen began opening cabinets to locate a pan and something to cook. Surely, Laurent had bread or eggs or something somewhere in this sparse kitchen. 

He wasn’t completely hopeless at cooking--he’d had to learn during his army days at least a little--and he found a hunk of Gruyère in the refrigerator, which he sliced, along with a loaf of bread. Grilled cheese, then. 

When Damen set the plate on the counter, Laurent looked back and forth between the food its cook, his brow furrowed. 

“First time seeing a sandwich?” Damen teased. Fascinatingly, Laurent’s cheeks flushed. Damen could see him struggling to regain the severe exterior he cultivated and, failing to do so, he narrowed his eyes and pointedly took a bite of his food. 

When he was finished, Damen asked, “Where do you sleep? The doctor said you need to rest.” 

“The roof,” Laurent said, and then clasped a hand to his mouth as though he had not meant to say it. 

“The roof?” Damen asked, quirking an eyebrow. This answer surely had more to do with the head injury than the truth. 

Laurent, at this point, was bright red. “I thought,” he said, not meeting Damen’s eye, “that I couldn’t beat you if it came to a fight, and it was best to be behind a door that locks.” 

The implication hit Damen like a slap to the face. “Oh,” he said. And then, gently, he added, “I wouldn’t do that.” 

Laurent stared at his hands, folded in his lap. “No, I don’t think you would,” he managed quietly.

Coming from Laurent, that small allowance of trust seemed monumental. The smile was on Damen’s face before he could help it.

** ii. **

Damen was positive that Laurent hadn’t watched a film made in the last fifteen years. When he’d suggested that they watch something on the MacBook after Laurent had kept glancing at the bookshelves the way an alcoholic might eye a bottle of Jack Daniels, Laurent had rattled off a list of his favorites. The list had been completely batshit fucking crazy, much like the rest of Laurent, and had included a Swedish film about death from the 1950s, a Bosnian film which apparently showcased the inefficacy of the United Nations during a crisis and which Laurent treated Damen like a complete idiot for not knowing about, and, bizarrely, _Mean Girls_.

Finally, Laurent let out an exasperated huff. “ _The Magnificent Seven_. Original, not the remake.” 

Damen could get behind that. “I love westerns.” 

“You and Stalin both. I wonder what it is that attracts unelected pricks who sow disaster wherever they go to cowboys.” 

Jesus Christ. Laurent never gave it a fucking rest. “I suppose I should be glad you’re starting to feel like your old self,” Damen said, determined not to sink so low as to snap at a concussed person. Even if that concussed person was a pain in the ass. 

And it was better that Laurent was no longer blinking around, looking adorable and confused and very unlike his usual, poisonous self. 

Laurent had pulled out the laptop and was already typing.

“Let me,” Damen said, making an attempt to take the laptop away from Laurent. Since the injury, Damen had gotten into the habit of doing everything he possibly could for Laurent.

Laurent batted his arm away from Damen. “I am capable of typing, behemoth,” he said indignantly. 

“Are you _pirating_ this?” Damen said, somewhat aghast.

“The horror,” Laurent said, a smirk dancing in the corner of his mouth. “You’ll be really upset when I tell you how I paid for this shiny new laptop.” 

Damen didn’t care for his tone, and folded his arms. He didn’t want to dignify Laurent with a response. 

“Here we are,” Laurent said as the credits began. He was still seated at the counter and, by the looks of it, did not plan on moving. 

“Shouldn’t we move to the bed?” Damen asked, and laughed at the incredulous look Laurent shot him. “Haven’t you ever watched a movie on a laptop with another person? You know, Netflix and chill? It’s easier on a bed.” 

“You absolutely must know that I have not,” Laurent said, looking as appalled as Damen had just moments before when he’d realized they were streaming _The Magnificent Seven_ illegally. 

“Come on,” Damen said, hoisting the laptop above Laurent’s head and walking towards the twin mattress. He made sure not to take up too much space, and was surprised to see Laurent following him without argument. He sat down stiffly, looking very uncomfortable. 

“Don’t worry,” Damen said. “I have a strict personal policy against making moves on anyone who compares me to Stalin.” 

That seemed to relax Laurent at least a little, who settled in next to Damen, leaving around three centimeters of space between them--a surprising feat considering how much of the bed Damen took up. 

“I watched this once with Auguste, dubbed into Veretian. It was completely horrendously done. I laughed so hard I threw up,” Laurent said, smiling a little at the memory. 

It was such a normal--companionable, even--thing to say that Damen initially thought that maybe he was hallucinating. What’s more, the idea of Laurent finding something hilarious simply did not compute in his mind. Laurent had a sense of humor, sure, but it was mean and wry. Laurent did not let go of himself enough to laugh until his ribs hurt. For the first time, Damen considered that maybe this Laurent and the Laurent who had been were two very, very different people. 

“You never talk about your brother,” Damen answered carefully. 

Laurent’s face was unreadable as he watched the small screen. They had been watching for about half an hour when, just at the part when Yul Brenner and Steve Mcqueen approach Charles Bronson, chopping wood in the sun, Laurent said, “I want Charles Bronson to rock me back and forth in his arms like I’m a baby.” 

This was, undoubtedly, the concussion talking. Damen turned to look at Laurent, who, by all appearances, was completely horrified he had said that out loud. 

Damen’s laugh was booming. He paused the movie. “That’s an utterly insane thing to say,” he choked out, nearly on the verge of hysterics. 

Laurent attempted to school his face into that scowl that Damen had gotten so used to, but fell short of the mark. Instead of a fierce man, he looked like a petulant child. The effect was only exaggerated when he crossed his arms. It made Damen laugh even harder.

Damen knuckled some of the tears out of his eyes. Once he had calmed down, he pressed play again. Now that the absurdity of it had faded to the background, the implication that Laurent was sexually attracted to someone made Damen’s gut do something strange. Damen had assumed that Laurent felt no sexual feeling towards anyone. 

But apparently, Laurent liked men. Broad-chested, strong men with square jaws and the ability to chop wood without breaking a sweat. And Damen couldn’t help but notice that he embodied those qualities.

** iii. **

It was the fourth day after Laurent’s injury when Laurent got a call from his uncle.

“They’re having me do a job in Sofia,” Laurent said when he hung up. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s another trap since there’s not much in Bulgaria worth stealing.” 

“Paschal said you wouldn’t be better for two weeks at least,” Damen said. “You can’t accept. You barely made it out of Ios at the top of your game. In your state--” He didn’t want to say it. 

“I realize you’ve never had a real job before, but not working isn’t an option if you wish to continue having electricity,” Laurent said. “And telling them I’m concussed because a mammoth Akielon who couldn’t leave well enough alone attacked me did not feel like an option either.” 

Stubborn. Laurent was stubborn, and always determined to think the worst of Damen, and turned everything into an insult, and was, overall, very unpleasant to be around. But Damen did not want Laurent to die. 

“What if you got a legitimate job after you’ve healed?” Damen asked. 

Laurent looked as though Damen had suggested that they eat one of the Van Gogh paintings Laurent had stolen. “You can’t be that stupid.” 

“It’s stupid to have a normal job? Regular people do it every day,” Damen shot back, bristling at the insult. 

“And you’re such an expert on what regular people do?” Laurent said. 

With a start, Damen realized that Laurent was enraged, which seemed like quite an overreaction given that it was a simple suggestion. He stomped around the loft, pulling a suitcase out of the closet and meticulously folding his nice suits into it. Damen had never seen anyone aggressively folding before and was momentarily amused at how Laurent could make even that look mean. He was muttering under his breath: “A normal job!” 

“Let me come with you,” Damen said. “Bulgaria’s not that far.” 

“Oh, so you truly _are_ this stupid,” Laurent said, whirling around to face Damen. 

“I need to know you’re safe,” Damen said seriously, holding Laurent’s gaze. 

Laurent softened almost imperceptibly. “I’ll get a gun,” he said, which was as close to a compromise as Damen was going to get.

** iv. **

The job in Sofia was pretty cut-and-dried. Their natural history museum had a lot of gold. Or at least, it used to, before Laurent, Lazar, and Aimeric snuck in in the dead of night and took it all.

Now, Laurent leaned against the wall of the downstairs bathroom of the National Palace of Culture, which was, apparently, a place where gay men liked to have anonymous sex. Laurent had had to look up how to say, “Fuck off,” in Bulgarian after the first three propositions.

He was still stewing about what the prince had said two days before. Get a normal job. A rich suggestion from someone in part to blame for Vere’s completely fucked economy. Like he could afford to live alone if he was a fucking barista. This was what he hated about rich people: they were fundamentally incapable of understanding how the world worked. Laurent would like to see how well the prince would fare making next to nothing in some cramped store. 

He checked his phone, irritated that he wasn’t allowed to read a book to pass the time. He had been waiting over an hour at this point, and was ready to go when he heard the door open. 

“ _Siktir,_ ” Laurent said.

“That’s harsh,” said a voice in heavily accented Veretian. 

Laurent looked up. The man standing before him was tall and not as handsome as the prince, but unmistakably Akielon. 

“You must be Nikandros,” Laurent said.


	8. vyvy1ryywyyej@5my2dd2okjr75aho.onion

** i. **

Laurent was cross with Auguste over something completely inconsequential and very funny, the details of which Auguste couldn’t quite remember--such was the nature of having an opinionated, headstrong child in one’s charge. How could he separate this morning’s incident from last week, when Laurent had inconspicuously worn socks that were out of the school’s uniform three days in a row until Auguste was called by the school and had to start monitoring his brother’s stockinged feet each morning, or from a month ago, when Laurent had inexplicably decided that backpacks were out and messenger bags were in and he must make the switch lest he be shamed by all his peers?--as he walked to meet Juillet for coffee.

He arrived before she did and ordered his favorite--Akielon-style, shamefully--and her favorite, a plain latte, and sat on one of the couches in the furthest reach of the cafe. 

He’d been seeing Juillet a while now, and beamed when she sat down in front of him. 

“I’m getting nervous in Arles,” she said by way of greeting. 

Auguste nodded. Juillet had grown up on a farm on the northern border and only moved to Arles for university. She’d stayed after graduation to find a job, but jobs were getting scarcer and scarcer and bombs more and more common. 

“You’re thinking of going back to your family’s farm?” Auguste asked. It wasn’t _that_ far of a drive up there. They could stay together. He bit his tongue before offering her a job. Juillet knew that Auguste’s profession paid very well and wasn’t exactly above-board, but that’s all she knew. 

“Maybe,” she said, cutting her eyes to the side. “I don’t know. I’ve been accepted to graduate schools in France, Germany, and England. I’m starting three weeks from now in Dortmund.” 

“I see,” Auguste said, taking a long drink of his coffee, certain he was about to get dumped.

Almost like an outburst, she said, “I don’t think a warzone is an appropriate place for a child.”

“Oh,” Auguste said, stunned. 

“You have plenty of savings--why not get out of the country until the occupation is over? If we married, you and Laurent both would have a visa.” 

Auguste’s mouth dropped open. He was almost never caught off-guard like this. And he realized, as she was speaking, that she’d rehearsed her pitch. 

He was in love with Juillet. He had not yet introduced her to Laurent, but he’d been planning such an introduction. Maybe she was right. It felt normal, the bombs and the shrapnel and the explosions. But it was not normal and this was no place for a child. 

And he could do a lot worse than a beautiful, smart, ambitious, down-to-earth woman who cared about Laurent despite having never met him. 

He didn’t think too long before he smiled cheekily and said, “I would’ve liked to get you a ring.”

** ii. **

Juillet had packed a duffle for a thirteen-year-old. She remembered Auguste saying that Laurent liked books, so she bought an anthology of Ernest Hemingway (his prose was so elementary that it was what she had read at that age, learning English), and a copy of _Twilight_ because it seemed all thirteen-year-olds liked it. Also in the duffle was food her 11-year-old sister liked: Doritos, Aero bars, boxes of juice and bottles of water.

She waited an hour after she was supposed to, and, angrily, got on the train. When she got off in Germany, she saw Auguste’s face in the paper: “VERETIAN MAN KILLED VIA FRIENDLY FIRE FROM AKIELON OCCUPANTS.”

** iii. **

Nikandros had been suspicious when he’d received an email from the address vyvyr1yywyyej@5my2dd2okjr75aho.onion. He almost deleted it without reading, thinking that surely such a random string of letters could only be from a spam bot, but he recognized the “.onion” domain to mean that the message was encrypted (thanks to the time he’d unsuccessfully pitched upping internet security around the palace), and that intrigued him, so he opened it.

[ **vyvy1ryywyyej@5my2dd2okjr75aho.onion** ] to [ **kyrosnikandros@akielos.gov** ]

> I have your prince and wish to be rid of him. I find him stupid and needlessly difficult. He has mentioned in passing that he is sure you were not a conspirator in the recent coup led by Kastor, but I have very little faith in his ability to judge someone. I would like to meet you before we ally ourselves. Do not go to the authorities or this will be the last you’ll hear of me. 

Below was a phone number preceded by Vere’s country code and instructions to call at eight in the morning Veretian time any day after he got the email. It wasn’t signed.

Nikandros had to reread the message three times. Firstly, there had been no coup, and secondly, what sort of ransomer didn’t demand a ransom? Nikandros pulled the business card someone from INTERPOL had given him out of his wallet. They had questioned him the night Damen disappeared, slipping him the card in case he remembered anything. This would be a perfect time to call if there ever was one. 

But the accusation against Kastor gave him pause. Privately, it had unsettled him how quick Kastor had been to seize power. It unsettled him how close Kastor was immediately to the Lady Jokaste, as if there was something there before. And it unsettled him how Kastor seemed to be hinting at beginning a second campaign in Vere despite the first one nearly ruining King Theomedes. 

But most of all, he thought that this was probably a strange, cruel prank. 

Nikandros checked his watch. It was 8:50 Akielon time, an hour ahead of Arles. He could call.

** iv. **

Laurent took the train to a busy neighborhood in Arles and leaned against a gray stone wall slowly getting devoured by ivy, a thin copy of _En attendant Godot_ held open in his right hand. He was still not supposed to read--he had had to sneak this book out under his shirt so the prince wouldn’t see it and scold him for it--and in truth, doing so made him a bit dizzy.

Diagonally from him stood one of the few payphones left in the city. It was 7:45 in the morning on a Monday and the scents of varying breakfasts wafted through the streets. 

Laurent lowered his book, admitting defeat, and leaned his still-aching head back to rest on the wall. The sun warmed his face. It was a beautiful, golden morning, and he momentarily allowed himself to enjoy it. 

And then he heard the telephone ringing. It was, by now, precisely eight o’clock. He walked across the street and answered the phone on its second ring.

** v. **

Without Laurent around, Damen did not entirely know what to do with himself. The laptop was password-protected, and he kicked himself for not asking Laurent how to unlock it before he left. He tried to read the first few pages of _The Road_ at least three times before deciding that it was bad, actually, and people only liked it because it was weird before moving on to _Naked Lunch_ and deciding the same.

Laurent had two bookcases for fiction and two for nonfiction, meticulously organized by the author's last name. For whatever reason, the attention to detail annoyed him, and he pulled out _The Essential Chomsky_ and moved it next to _The Master and Margarita_ out of spite. 

By the end of the second day, he was bored enough that he considered masturbating, something he had not done--as Crown Prince, there had been more than enough opportunities to fulfill that particular need--since he was a teenager. Instead, he settled on doing as many push-ups as he could before collapsing. He’d lost track of how many he was up to--somewhere in the four hundreds, he guessed--when he heard the door snick open. 

He caught himself grinning as he jumped to his feet. He had _missed_ Laurent, he realized. He did not think he was capable of missing someone who did nothing but snap at him and boss him around, but there it was. And he was incredibly thankful that he had been caught working out instead of jerking off.


End file.
